And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  The Waste Land, pt.1,'The Burial of the Dead'.

Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.2.

No matter how vital experiencemight be whileyou lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

-Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
In This Our Life, pt.3, ch.9.

   A little season of love and laughter, Of light and life, and pleasure and pain, And horror of outer darkness after, And dust returneth to dust again. Then the lesser life shall be as the greater, And the lover of life shall join the hater, And the one thing cometh sooner or later, And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

-Gordon, Adam Lindsay
'The Swimmer', stanza10, collected in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870).

Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

-Gray,Thomas
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.41^4.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back; Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked any thing.

-Herbert, George
'Love', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, And then not hear it crying!

-Herbert, George
'Denial', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

The troubles of our proud and angry dust Are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

-Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)
  Last Poems, no.9.

Theoretical webs, dirty webs, fusty webs, old and shrivelling away into nothingness, a fine dust.Who needs that kind of stuff. Far far better getting out into the open air and doing it, actually doing it, something solid and concrete and unconceptualisable.

-Kelman,James
English churchman, the father of theTractarian movement. He was also influential in the Oxford Movement afterJ H Newman's secession to Rome. 1989  A Disaffection.

It isn't just dust that is settling in Korea, Senator, it is American blood.

-MacArthur, Douglas
  During the Senate inquiry on Mac Arthur's dismissal. Reported in the NewYork Times, 2 May.

Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

-1st Baron
  'A  Jacobite's Epitaph', closing lines.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

   Let them bestow on every airth a limb, Then open all my veins that I may swim To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake; Then place my parboiled head upon a stake, Scatter my ashes, strew them in the airö Lord! since thou knowest where all these atoms are, I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust, And confident thou'lt raise me with the just.

-Montrose,James Graham, 1st Marquis of
  'Lines Composed on the Eve of his Execution'.

Excuse My Dust.

-Parker, Dorothy ne¤  e Rothschild
  Suggested epitaph for herself. Quoted in Alexander Woollcott While Rome Burns (1934),'Our Mrs Parker'. She also suggested 'This is on me' for her tombstone.

   Even such isTime, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust, Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days, And from which earth, and grave, and dust The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

-Raleigh, Sir Walter
  'TheAuthor's Epitaph, Made by Himself'. Poem written the night before his death.

When Abraham Lincoln was shovelled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin† in the dust, in the cool tombs.

-Sandburg, Carl
  Cornhuskers,'CoolTombs'.

Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  Prometheus Unbound, act1, l.191^4.

The dust of creeds outworn.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  Prometheus Unbound act1, l.697.

   He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting nowö Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Adonais, stanza 38.

The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Scepter and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

-Shirley,James
  The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses, act1, sc.3.