In the licorice fields at Pontefract My love and I did meet And many a burdened licorice bush Was blooming round our feet; Red hair she had and golden skin, Her sulky lips were shaped for sin, Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd, The strongest legs in Pontefract.

-Betjeman, SirJohn
  A Few Late Chrysanthemums,'The Licorice Fields at Pontefract'.

   And the angel of the L appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, thebushburnedwithfire,andthebushwasnotconsumed.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDExodus 3:2.

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God.

-Browning, Elizabeth ne¤  e Barrett
  Aurora Leigh, bk.7.

President Bush†seems to think that the ship [of state] will be saved by imperceptible undercurrents, directed by the invisible hand of some cyclical economic god, that will gradually move the ship so that at the last moment it will miraculously glide past the rocks to safer shores.

-Cuomo, Mario Matthew
  Address nominating Bill Clinton as Democratic presidential candidate,15  Jul.

I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls.

-of Bin Bin
My Brilliant Career, ch.38.

   Mitterrand has100 lovers.One has AIDS, but he doesn't know which one.Bush has100 bodyguards.One is a terrorist, but he doesn't know which one.Gorbachev has100 economic advisers.One issmart, but he doesn't know which one.

-Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich
  In the Sunday Times, 9 Dec.

The devil Bush and his treacherous gang, with criminal Zionism, havebegunthegreat showdown, themotherof all battles between good and evil.

-Hussein, Saddam
  Speech in Baghdad, 6  Jan, describing Operation Desert Storm. Quoted in the Sunday Times, 27  Jan.

At dawn prayers today on March 20 2003 (17 Muharram 1424), the criminal, reckless little Bush and his aides committed this crime that he was threatening to commit against Iraq and humanity.

-Hussein, Saddam
   Address to the nation of Iraq, broadcast on state television, after a US strike on Baghdad. Quoted in The Guardian, 20 Mar.

Andthesunsankagainonthegrand Australianbushöthe nurseandtutorofeccentric minds, thehome oftheweird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.

-Lawson, Henry Hertzberg
  'The Bush Undertaker', first published in The Antipodean.

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice callingöyet so warm, and yet so cold: 'I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old'?

-Lawson, Henry Hertzberg
'On the Night Train', collected in Colin Roderick (ed) Henry Lawson: Collected Verse (3 vols,1967^9).

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks in history.

-Le Carre¤  ,John pseudonym of  David John Moore Cornwell
  In Time, 27  Jan.

As for meöfor me, the grass grew longer, and more sorrowful, and the trees were surfaced like flesh, and girls were no longer to be treated lightly but were creatures of commanding sadness, and all journeys through the valley were now made alone, with passion in every bush, and the motions of wind and cloud and stars were suddenly for myself alone, and voices elected me of all men living and called me to deliver the world, and I groaned from solitude, blushed when I stumbled, loved strangers and bread and butter, and made long trips through the rain on my bicycle, stared wretchedly through lighted windows, grinned wryly to think how little I was known, and lived in a state of raging excitement.

-Lee, Laurie
  Cider With Rosie,'Last Days'.

We live in a time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president, a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. We are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush. Shame on you.

-Moore, Michael
   At the 76th  Academy Awards, where he was awarded an Oscar for Best Documentary Director.

Proud Maisie is in the wood, Walking so early; Sweet Robin sits on the bush, Singing so rarely.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  The Heart of Midlothian, ch.40 (MadgeWildfire's song).

Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with the stars to see, Bread I dip in the riverö There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.1,'TheVagabond', stanza1.

We will listen to the wind's text Blown through the roof, or the thrush's song In the thick bush that proved him wrong, Wrong from the start, for nature's truth Is primary and her changing seasons Correct out of a vaster reason The vague errors of the flesh.

-Thomas, R(onald) S(tuart)
  'The Minister'.

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

-Thomas, R(onald) S(tuart)
  Laboratories of the Spirit,'The Bright Field'.