clay

I dread this like the dentist, rather more so: To me Art's subject is the human clay, And landscape but a background to a torso; All Ce¤ z anne's apples I would give away For one small Goya or a Daumier.

—Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)

   Purpose apart, perched like an umpire, dozes, Dreams golden balls whirring through indigo. Clay blurs the whitewash but day still encloses The albinos, bonded in their flick and flow. Playing in musicked gravity, the pair Score liquid Euclids in foolscaps of air.

—Avison, Margaret

Was it for this the clay grew tall? öO what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

—Owen,Wilfred

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

—Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)

Thou,O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his bellyand his thighs of brass.His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stonewas cut out without hands, whichsmotetheimage upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

—Bible (Old Testament)

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Honouring itself the clay rears up To praise its pottering purposes, But, oh, much sorrow shall it sup Before fulfilment is.

—Barker, George Granville

In time the Rockies may crumble Gibraltar may tumble They're only made of clay, But our love is here to stay.

—Gershwin, Ira originally Israel Gershowitz

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

I waited patiently for the L, and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Time'swheelsrunsbackor stops: Potterand clayendure.

—Browning, Robert

Nay but,O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it,Why hastthou made methus? Hathnotthepotter powerover the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

—Bible (NewTestament)

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.

—Malamud, Bernard

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it,What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?

—Bible (Old Testament)