"Clod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But gained the god's own feeling when he gives Such thrill to what turns life from death before. 'Gods many and Lords many,' says the Book: You would have yielded up your soul to me —Not to the false god who has burned its clay In his own image. I had shed my love Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence, Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun that drinks and then disperses. Both of us Blameworthy,—I first meet my punishment— And not so hard to bear. I breathe again! Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy At last I struggle—uncontaminate: ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... not as fresh as it had been when the plants were there. And the vats which had taken the places of the banked greenery were certainly nothing to look at. Queex humped itself into a clod of blue, immovable, halfway down ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... sport to bait a poor soul as be helpless, I think—nay I know, for I've stood there myself ere now, though I won't say as I didn't clod this fellow once or twice to-day myself—I were a rare clodder in my time, aha! Did you ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... each other's hand as if they stood prepared for combat before the tribunal of the praetor; he commanded them to produce the object of the dispute; they went, they returned with measured steps, and a clod of earth was cast at his feet to represent the field for which they contended. This occult science of the words and actions of law was the inheritance of the pontiffs and patricians. Like the Chaldean astrologers, they announced to their clients the days of business and repose; these important ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Bruin heard this communication to an end, than, despite his promise and the poor dog's cries, he caught up a huge clod of earth and dropped it upon the devoted head of the struggling animal beneath. There was a great splash; a bubble or two came to the surface of the horrid pool, and the brutal deed was consummated. Yet at the same moment Bruin regretted he had been so precipitate, for he had ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... we not analogically suppose in the same manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast "clod of the valley" which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wilds, her waters, the intense Reply of hers to our intelligence! Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves Without a spirit? Are the dropping cares Without a feeling in their silent tears? No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres, Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before Its hour, and merge our soul in the ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... to stretch like the channellings in a piece of new corduroy, lending a meanly utilitarian air to the expanse, taking away its gradations, and depriving it of all history beyond that of the few recent months, though to every clod and stone there really attached associations enough and to spare—echoes of songs from ancient harvest-days, of spoken words, and of sturdy deeds. Every inch of ground had been the site, first or last, of energy, gaiety, horse-play, bickerings, weariness. Groups of gleaners ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... from the Secretary of the Treasury recommends the detail or exemption of the bank officers of South Carolina. The poor country clod-hoppers have no friends, and must do ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... full soon beneath the sod Doth perish and decay, Though cherished body is but clod, Yet in his soul man is a God, To do and live alway. So hence with gloom and banish fear, Come Mirth and Jollity, Since, though we pine in dungeon drear, Though these, our bodies, languish here, We in our minds ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements; To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone,—nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... a clod I was! I used to hear you cough night after night, and I would mutter, 'Poor Madge!' and go to sleep. To think that you might have suffered as this girl is suffering! I never realized it before, yet I thought I did. I can't tell you how my whole nature rebels at it all, and pious talk ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... see a very bright reflection of the window, which made me ghess, that the Cornea of it was smooth, like those of bigger Insects. Its motion was pretty quick and strong, it being able very easily to tumble a stone or clod four times as big as its ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... air like sighs—like the distant tones of a bell tolling a requiem—a lament, poetic, mournful, despairing, yet ineffably sweet and tender, ending in one deep, sustained note like the last clod of earth falling upon ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was a neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemed to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... in the graveyard, A short and narrow bed; No grass is growing on it, And no marble at its head: Ye may sit and weep beside it Ye may kneel and kiss the sod, But ye'll find no balm for sorrow, In the cold and silent clod. ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... by a brass crown the size of a baby's head. His office enabled him to be brave on the cheap, so by dint of digging his weapon into the ribs of all and sundry, they being, as he expressed it, too thick on the clod, he cleared a path for the grocer-mayor, who had gotten himself again into his scarlet gown. His worship was gawky, flustered, and uncertain, and listened like a scared rabbit to mine host, a man of much talk, who explained proudly what was to ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... sitting on them. The gray mantle is pulled down and enlarged as he sits, but when he jumps up it shrinks somewhat, all his black-and-white marks are now shown, and just as his colors formerly whispered, "I am a clod," they now shout aloud, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... narrow plank-bridge for foot-passengers. It then made across the field for the Bain. He saw it pass out of sight down the banks of the river, close by a willow tree, overhanging the water; but it did not emerge on the other side. With the lack of quick wit, characteristic of the clod-hopper, it did not occur to him to mention this at the time. He told it, however, afterwards to his master, a hunting man; and, on a subsequent occasion, when the same incident occurred again, one of the whips dismounted ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... that those that pray not at all cannot be good, cannot know, love, or trust in God. For if the star, though it shine, is not the sun, then surely a clod of dirt cannot be the sun. Why, a praying man doth as far outstrip a non-praying man as a star outstrips a clod of earth. A non-praying man lives like a beast. "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but this man doth not know, but this man doth ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... again he introduces Love and Death, who dispute concerning him. For, like Dante and all the nobler souls of Italy, he is much occupied with thoughts of the grave, and his true mistress is death,—death at first as the worst of all sorrows and disgraces, with a clod of the field for its brain; afterwards, death in its high distinction, its detachment from vulgar needs, the angry stains of life ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... understand?" I asked indignantly. "The thing you have seen and felt has been in this world long enough for every man to understand. Eve used it upon Adam. I can't understand? Damme, sir, do you think I am a clod? I have felt ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... clod! In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers; The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears, And scant and sear the desert grasses nod Where once the armies of Assyria trod, With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... imaginative, yet practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Martins is an old witch, gentlemen, that is what she is, and she charmed me, and I got no sleep for her for three nights, and one night at half-past eleven o'clock, I got up because I could not sleep, and went out and found a "walking toad" under a clod that had been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I could not rest; she is a bad old woman; she put this toad under there to charm me, and her daughter is just as bad, gentlemen. She would bewitch any one; she charmed ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... ye tears! that have long refused to flow, Ye are welcome to my heart—thawing, thawing, like the snow; I feel the hard clod soften, and the early snowdrops spring, And the healing fountains gush, and the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... house, thus losing so much strength to say nothing of the unevenness of their roasts—part raw, part roasted, producing an unpleasant taste. An occasional burned roast at home helped some. They tell of a man who, going out in the back yard and kicking over a clod by accident, uncovered some burned coffee. He called to his wife and wanted an explanation. She acknowledged she had burnt it, and hid it so he would not scold. He said, "We had better buy it roasted in the future ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... belonged to an absolute stranger. He looked like an oafish clod, even viewed objectively, and Forrester was making no efforts in that direction. He had one arm around Gerda's waist and he was grinning up at her, and, sideways, at Forrester with a look that made them co-conspirators ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... into the preserve of the wealthy marquis. Olga's friends—and Olga! A fine escape he had made of it, into the very sphere of the Countess Tcherny's activities! The Ch‰teau must be near here, at the most not more than a few kilometers distant. He was a clod-pate, nothing less. For with all the Oire to choose from he had stumbled blindly into the one path that led to danger. What was to be done? He got to his feet stealthily and went through the lodge. A dining ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "Thou good-for-nothing clod! Thou hast spoiled the work with thy clumsy handling! Why canst not leave alone what thou dost not understand? Who gave permission to change? Body of me! Must I stand over thee every hour in the day and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... stir of new life in the clod suggests to Bryant by contrast the thought of death; and there is nowhere in his poetry a passage of deeper feeling than the closing stanzas of June, in which he speaks of himself, by anticipation, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... amused by this. But the next moment the wheels on one side of the car jumped high over a clod of hard earth, and daddy had to grab quick at Mun Bun or he might have been jounced completely out ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... is this?" I thought presently. "Do my own body and limbs refuse to obey my will? Cannot Caspar Haas, the undisputed lord of so many rich vineyards and fat pastures, move this wretched clod of earth which most certainly belongs to him? Oh, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... at you I regard my pride as most pardonable and natural. My old thoughts and hopes are realized beyond even imagination, although, looking at your eyes, in old times, I always had a high ideal of your capabilities. I should be a clod indeed if I were not proud of such a sister to ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle, the wonders of the past, as connected with that stream, the glories of the present, and even the history of the future, were at that moment being revealed. Of how many feats of chivalry had those old walls been witness, when hostile kings contended for their ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... grandfather on his mother's side." (I poked my stick as directed.) "That's his tooth you've got now; but I won't swear to it, as things had got a bit mixed, no doubt, afore they put him in. Wait a bit, though. What's under that big lump at the end o' my spade?" (He reached out his spade and touched a clod; I turned it over and revealed the thing it hid: he examined it carefully.) "You see, you can generally tell after a bit o' practice what belongs to what. Putting two and two together—what with them bones coming up so regular, and that bit o' coffin furniture right on the top on 'em—I reckon ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... hopes, undated by vain assurance. His attitude towards death neither sweetens "the unpalatable draught of mortality" nor permits us to let go the balm of its "eternal peace." How frightful "to lie in cold obstruction and to rot; this sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod!" and yet, "after life's fitful fever," how blessed ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... wear a stand-up collar, nor an eyeglass, nor spats to his veldtschoon. He does not talk with a silly lisp or an inane drawl. Therefore, the useless fellows whom Britain trusted with the important task of watching him and sizing him up counted him as a boor as well as a Boer—a mere country clod. But now, from the rocky hills, these clods, these sons of semi-white savages, laugh at us derisively, and answer our jeers with rifles that know how to speak in a language that even the bravest of our troops have ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... hope, years of dogged silent work, years of self-confidence could not do—it jolted Canada and the world into a consciousness of the Dominion's possibilities. It is like the true story of the finding of coal on Vancouver Island—a miner stubbed his toe and lo, a clod of earth split into a seam ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... features sometimes resembled. Shunka Chistala (which is Sioux for Little Dog) came bounding over the low ridge that hid the ranch buildings from sight, and wagged himself dislocatingly up to her. Annie-Many-Ponies frowned at his approach until she saw that Applehead was aiming a clod at the dog, whereupon she touched her heels to the horse and sent him between Applehead and her pet, and gave Shunka Chistala a sharp command in Sioux that sent him back to the house with his ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... "each fallen leaf, each sprig or spray of undergrowth, the very weeds, each clod." Lit. "what kind of material, what kind of soil does not become manure when thrown into ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... world on fire; Thy face amid our timid counsels thrust Would light us back to glory and desire, And swords flash forth that now ignobly rust; Maenad and Muse, upon thy lips of flame. Madness too wise might kiss a clod to fame. ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... mass, Flow'd in the stream, or shiver'd in the grass? "Father of mercies! why from silent earth Didst thou awake, and curse me into birth? Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, And make a thankless present of thy light? Push into being a reverse of thee, And animate a clod with misery? "The beasts are happy; they come forth, and keep Short watch on earth, and then lie down to sleep. Pain is for man; and oh! how vast a pain For crimes, which made the Godhead bleed in vain! Annull'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... 1527 he died at Florence immediately after the establishment of the second Republic. He had lived as a practising Christian, and so died, surrounded by his wife and family. Wild legends grew about his death, but have no foundation. A peasant clod in San Casciano could not have made a simpler end. He was buried in the family Chapel in Santa Croce, and a monument was there at last erected with the epitaph by Doctor Ferroni—'Tanto nomini nullum par elogium.' The first edition of his complete works was published ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... not make a clod shine. You can not make a mollusk aspire. You must have the material to work with, to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... leaf, and there was no occasion for rapid motion; then what cared he? It was in the middle of the season of hot suns, which beamed fiercely upon him, till he became baked in the slime to the earth, and found himself as incapable of moving as the clod upon which he dwelt. Gradually he grew in size and stature, and his form experienced a change, till at length what was once a snail, creeping upon all-fours on the earth, ripened into man, erect, tall, and stately, strong of limb, rugged of purpose, and ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... grab fled ship blot lump drab sled whip spot pump slab sped slip plot jump stab then drip trot hump brag bent spit clog bulk cram best crib frog just clan hemp gift plod drug clad vest king stop shut dash west grit clod hush ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul for grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... he dig in a ditch, or blaze a trail, Where the dreams of men may run? No clod of earth shall shoulder him From his place ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... sleeper, and, taking a careful aim, let it go. The bank was not regular. A lump diverted the divit from its course, and it plunged into the pool, to the obvious discomposure of the fish, which was still at intervals tugging at the line. Another divit was tried, but with similar result. A third clod went still further astray. The bombardment then became exciting, as every kind of effort does when one begins to realise the beneficial ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Harry, bending his uncovered head, as, a sinewy, graceful figure in dusty canvas, with the white sod behind him, he helped her across a raw strip of steaming clod, while neither of us spoke again until we had completed another furrow. It was a glorious spring, and not for long years had there been such a seed time, the men who helped us said, while my hopes rose with every fresh acre we drilled ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... passage came clod, clod, clod, And when he opened the door, He croaked so harsh, 'twas as much as she could To keep from laughing the more, the more, To ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... They're that unreasonable, an' yet ye canna reason them down; an' they're that weak, an' yet ye canna make them gie in tae ye. Of course, ye'll say ye canna reason doon a stane, or make a clod o' earth gie ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... standing as I did well above him, while his eyes were steadfastly bent downward. And, not content with eyesight only, he seemed to be feeling every blade of grass or weed, every single stick or stone, craning into each cranny of the ground, and probing every clod with his hands. Then, after vainly searching with the very utmost care all the space from the hawthorn trunk to the meadow-leet (which was dry as usual), he ran, in a fury of impatience, to his rod, which he had stuck into the bank, as now I saw, and drew off the butt end, and removed ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... brambles and roots that grew out of the rift of the rocks. She entreated him to cease, implored him, shrieked to him to spare her, but not a muscle moved in the face above her; it seemed set in a vacant smile, and even his heart was dead too, for he ruthlessly flung down now a pebble, now a clod, one after the other, till her hands were losing their last feeble hold and she was on the point of falling into the fatal gulf below. Her own cry of terror aroused her, but during the brief process of returning from her dream to actuality, she saw through swiftly parting mists—only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sweet truth has in his eyes almost the elements of a religion. With growing knowledge his power of sympathy is enlarged; until like Saint Francis, he can call the sun his brother and the moon his sister; can grieve with homeless winds, and feel a kinship with the clod. The very agonies by which his soul has been wrung open to his gaze visions of truth which else he had never caught, and so he finds even in things evil some touch of goodness. Praise and blame are for children, but to ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... little kraal on the hillside, and David made the coffin. When he nailed down the lid he was an old man; when the first red clod rang on it, he felt that life had emptied itself. When they were back in the house again, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Bracken which was shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them, wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls. We go directly under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he makes no sign. We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his wings. Not till a stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly away. And the other two sit unmoved. But some night ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the last, extended on the bed of death, with but sense and sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod of the valley their emancipated spirits were ascending to the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... breakfast, accepted the terms. The new "hands" were now led to the garden, where the farmer had half an acre plowed up, and each was furnished with an old, dull hoe, with crooked, knotty handles. The farmer then, with blushes and stammering, explained that he desired to have each particular clod chopped up fine with the hoe. The soldiers—town men—thought this an almost superhuman task and a great waste of time, but, so that the work procured food, they cared not what the work might be, and at it they went ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... therefore, that all things are made of one stuff, and on the principle that a difference in degree produces a difference in kind. From the clod and the rock up to the imponderable, to light and electricity, the difference is only more or less of selection and filtration. Every grade is a new refinement, the same law lifted to a higher plane. The air is earth with some of the coarser elements purged ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... talking; the world of wealth, fashion, extravagance, and youth. He was no more than three-and-twenty himself. He ought to have been fired by the sight of all this beauty, and all this happiness. Nobody in the world can look half so happy as a lovely girl finely dressed. But he sat there like a clod, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... intends to make the companion of his life—no such feeling, for instance, as I have for you at this moment. Well, I married you and we lived together as happily as most young couples do. I knew that I had a good wife, and you didn't know, or even suspect, what a brainless, heartless clod you had for your husband. Our married life glided by without anything particular happening to disturb it. But the thing became monotonous to me, and I had the senseless vagabond's desire for change. We did fairly well on the farm, but once or twice I was on the point of proposing ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... the camp of the Sons of Usna, and to Naoise she told the story of the love that Deirdre bore him, and counselled him to come to the place where she was hidden, and behold her beauty. And Naoise, who had seen how even a rough clod of a hind could achieve the noble chivalry of a race of kings for her dear sake, felt his heart throb within him. "I will come," ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... damn if I do!" Johnny's full, young voice shouted ragefully. "It'll save me firing myself. Before I'll work with a bunch of yellow-bellied, pin-headed fools—" He threw a clod of dirt that caught Tex on the chin and filled his mouth so that he nearly choked, and a jagged pebble that hit Aleck just over the ear a glancing blow that sent him reeling. The third was aimed at Bill, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... passed the young lord he cast on him a look so full of meaning, that though Hereward knew not what the meaning was, it startled him, and for a moment softened him. Did this man who had sullenly avoided him for more than two years, whom he had looked on as a clod or a post in the field beneath his notice, since he could be of no use to him,—did this man still care for him? Hereward had reason to know better than most that there was something strange and uncanny about the man. Did he mean him well? Or had he some grudge against ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to charity), but to any of his companions who had done him a good service, or who had even warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile. He was honest, too,—honest to the backbone. You might have trusted him with gold untold. Through the heavy clod which man's care had not moulded, nor books enlightened, nor the priest's solemn lore informed, still natural rays from the great parent source of Deity struggled, fitful and dim. He had no lawful name; none knew if sponsors had ever stood security for his sins at the sacred ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mysteries, and the other ceremonies of their religion. The origin of this act among the people of Tuscany, is related by Cicero in the following manner: "A peasant," says he, "ploughing in the field, his ploughshare running pretty deep in the earth, turned up a clod, from whence sprung a child, who taught him and the other Tuscans the art of divination." (Cicero, De Divinat. l. 2.) This fable, undoubtedly means no more, than that this child, said to spring from the clod of earth, was a youth ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die; Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living death? O thought Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath Of life that sinned; what dies but what had life And sin? The body properly had neither, All of me then shall die: let this appease ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... containing a black Q. M. coffin, upon which were perched four or five wet, disconsolate troopers armed with picks and shovels. Old Jeremiah followed, mounted, a feverish light in his eyes and drops of moisture standing on his grizzled mustache. So he went forth and saw them consign to earth the clod that had been his son—or rather, consign to water, for the grave was half full when they reached it. He did not see it, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the mouse buttock, or clod of beef, or a blade-bone, or the sticking-piece, or the like weight of the breast of veal; cut it into pieces of three or four ounces each; put three or four ounces of beef drippings, and mince a couple of large onions, and put them into a large deep stew-pan; as soon ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... horse, then at a grindstone, where a knight's sword was being sharpened, he was nearly knocked down by a horse, urged at some speed through the crowds. By a rope from the collar, three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and disfigured by bumping against stone and clod. They were those of slaves, hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere whim, since every baron ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... slowly, for mine is not a nature that is really shaped for war. A vivid imagination is here a handicap, and it is those who have little or none who make the best soldiers. At last the "finished and finite clod" has come into his own. Stolid, in a danger he hardly realizes, he remains at his post, while the other, perchance shaking in every limb, has double the battle to fight. My pencil wanders on and I hardly seem to know what I write. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... compass spirit that could grasp A star and dash it from its orbit, till It flew through space eternally, and whelmed Myriads of spheres in flaming ruin, yet Cannot consummate that which is so light, One hour's emancipation from this clod To wander thro' such worlds. Which brightest orb In heaven's wide treasury shines in ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... "I'm afraid that I must conclude that her unchivalrous clod of a husband has indeed stooped to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... young man became more fiery. He stamped the earth with his foot and shouted so angrily that the younger children dispersed immediately, and only the oldest boy, as though he would have revenge for the scolding, seized a clod of earth and wished to throw ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... soon as it emerges from the ground. Without the rich and delicious odor of its compeer, it has an inexpressibly fresh and earthy scent, that seems to bring all the promise of the blessed season with it; indeed, that clod of fresh turf with the inhalation of which Lord Bacon delighted to begin the day must undoubtedly have been full of the roots of our little hepatica. Its healthy sweetness belongs to the opening year, like Chaucer's poetry; and one thinks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... the little region altered. At the first few drops, all the ants would hasten, the throbbing corpuscles speeding up. Then, as the rain came down heavier, the column melted away, those near each end hurrying to shelter and those in the center crawling beneath fallen leaves and bits of clod and sticks. A moment before, hundreds of ants were trudging around a tiny pool, the water lined with ant handrails, and in shallow places, veritable formicine pontoons,—large ants which stood up to their bodies in water, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... begin, with the favor and permission of Heaven, where I think the business may rightly be said to begin. The time was a May morning, the morning of May-day, warm and bright with sunlight, one of those mornings which makes a clod seem like a poet and a poet seem like a god. The place was the Piazza Santa Felicita, with the Arno flowing pretty full and freely now between its borders of mud. I can see it all as I write, as I saw it yesterday, that yesterday so many years ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... thing with rare spirit, caught, worried, and killed each clod of earth hurled at him, then bounded expectant forward for the next sacrifice that would be thrown for his delight in this ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... intellect and sensibilities inspired him with nothing but contempt and loathing for the mass of mankind, the aristocrat who in a dozen plays sneers at the greasy caps and foul breaths of the multitude, fell in love with Dogberry, and Bottom, Quickly and Tearsheet, clod and clown, pimp and prostitute, for the laughter they afforded. His humour is rarely sardonic; it is almost purged of contempt; a product not of hate but of love; full of sympathy; summer-lightning ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... zeemed to turn it over and find it under this here clod I'm breaking up with the hoe. Wish I'd looked when ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... a great-hearted frog, took up a clod of mud and flung it full at a mouse that was coming furiously upon him. That mouse's helmet was knocked off and his forehead was plastered with the clod of mud, so that he was ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... strained composure. "They have come back to me after an absence of nearly twenty-five years; they are the letters she wrote to me in the days of our courtship" (here Brandon laughed scornfully),—"she carried them away with her, you know when; and (a pretty clod of consistency is woman!) she kept them, it ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... former and the after lives. For so our scriptures truly seem to teach, That—once, and wheresoe'er, and whence begun— Life runs its rounds of living, climbing up From mote, and gnat, and worm, reptile, and fish, Bird and shagged beast, man, demon, Deva, God, To clod and mote again; so are we kin To all that is; and thus, if one might save Man from his curse, the whole wide world should share The lightened horror of this ignorance Whose shadow is chill fear, and cruelty Its bitter pastime. Yea, if one might save! ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... glory of trees is more than their gifts: 'Tis a beautiful wonder of life that lifts, From a wrinkled seed in an earth-bound clod, A column, an arch in the temple of God, A pillar of power, a dome of delight, A shrine of song, and a joy of sight! Their roots are the nurses of rivers in birth; Their leaves are alive with the breath of the earth; They shelter the dwellings of man; and they bend O'er his grave with the look of ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... glimpse of the open country, stretching away to meet the low horizon, brought back the half-forgotten thought of Freedom; and the very trail of her robe is so glorious, that even this poor savage liberty of rock and clod roused in him anew wit to devise and courage to endure. He worked then so merrily and with such good heart, that an admiring inspector more than hinted "at the pity it was to see a decent young fellow like him shut ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... butter-making in the sweet dairies; and Nature is lashing everything—grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human creatures—more fiercely onward to the fulfillment of her ends. She is the great heartless haymaker, wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod, but caring naught for the light that beats upon a throne, and holding man and woman, with their longing for immortality, and their capacities for joy and pain, as of no more account than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of this earthly clod and comes to light again in the second part in the time of Albrechtsberger. The already existing Fux, nota cambiata, is now dealt with in conjunction with Albrechtsberger. The alternating subjects of the Canon are most fully illustrated. The art of creating musical skeletons is carried ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... deeper into the foul heart of the town, they passed through swarms of idle children playing sportlessly, as poverty is apt to play, in the dank shadows of the narrow street. They seemed incited to mirth and ribaldry by the sight of Ronald's new friend, and one even ventured to hurl a clod at him; but this striking Ronald instead, and he facing promptly to the hostile quarter from whence it came, caused a sudden slinking of the crowd into unknown holes, like a horde of rats, and the street was for a time empty save for the little party that threaded it. Ronald began ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... females, who were present, fixed on her in solemn expectation, and the effect was instantaneous; the maiden really wept, and she gained no inconsiderable sympathy, and some reputation for a tender heart, from the spectators. The muscles of the peddler's face were seen to move, and as the first clod of earth fell on the tenement of his father, sending up that dull, hollow sound that speaks so eloquently the mortality of man, his whole frame was for an instant convulsed. He bent his body down, as if in pain, his ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the stone, except in the picturesque aspect? Do you know that a great many of these time revered and honored adages are the greatest humbugs in the world?" asked the audacious young iconoclast. "Who wants to be a stone or a clod, or even a bit of velvet moss? They go to make up the world, it is true; but is that narrow, torpid, insensate life any pattern for human souls and active bodies? I think a man's business in this world is to find out ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... sphere unknown, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains: When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god: Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend His actions', passions', being's, use and end; Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity. Then say not ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... every other private decorated with clasps and medals for service in the wars of seven years since. As an invading body, perhaps, one would have preferred the Germans; but only because experience had taught them already what it would teach in twelve months to the Berkshire or Cambridge 'clod.' There, to us, was the true test of England's military qualities; her young men had come by tens of thousands, of their own free will, to be made soldiers of by her country gentlemen, and treated by them the while as men to be educated, not as things to ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... higher, but remember the proverb, 'Wipe your neighbor's son's nose and take him into your house.' It would be a pretty business, truly, to marry our Mary to some great count or knight, who, when the fancy takes him, would look upon her as some strange thing, and be calling her country-wench, clod-breaker's brat, and I know not what else. No, not while I live, husband; I have not brought up my child to be so used. Do you provide money, Sancho, and leave the matching of her to my care; for there is Lope Tocho, John Tocho's son, a lusty, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of Numa, and will not listen to the consolations of Hippolytus, who tells her of his own transformation, and she pines away into a fountain. This is not less wonderful, than how Tages sprang from a clod of earth; or how the lance of Romulus became a tree; or how Cippus became decked with horns. The Poet concludes by passing to recent events; and after shewing how AEsculapius was first worshipped by the Romans, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... FUROR. Vile, muddy clod of base, unhallowed clay, Thou slimy-sprighted, unkind Saracen, When thou wert born, Dame Nature cast her calf; For age and time hath made thee a great ox, And now thy grinding jaws devour quite The fodder due to us of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... myself alone:"— O man, forget not thou,—earth's honored priest, Its tongue, its soul, its life, its pulse, its heart,— In earth's great chorus to sustain thy part! Chiefest of guests at Love's ungrudging feast, Play not the niggard; spurn thy native clod, And self disown; Live to thy neighbor; live unto thy ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... attract his attention," said Sam. Catching up a clod of grass and dirt he threw it against ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... all the Deities confound you; you stink of garlick, you filth unmistakeable, you clod, you he-goat, you pig-sty, you mixture of dog ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... lip of hate, When in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; The grass grows bright, the boughs ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... as tis small; yet must be fought the unequal fray; A myriad giants here; and there a pinch of dust, a clod ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... under the invisible sun. There have been moments when I have felt the spell of Rome, but every one says here that it dawns gradually upon the mind. It would not have been so with me, I am convinced, if I had been warm. Who ever heard of an icicle glowing with emotion? What is Rome to a frozen clod? ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... without any previous knowledge. The hairts o the widow and fairtherless must be stricken, and it's little that a' our consolations and expairiments will prevail ag'in the feelin's o' natur'. Pheeloosophy and religion tall us that the body's no mair than a clod o' the valley when the speerit has fled; but the hairt is unapt to listen to wisdom while the grief is fraish, and of the severity of an unlooked-for sairtainty. I see little good, therefore, in doing mair than just sending in a messenger, to clear the way ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... narrow box pulpit suggested human frailty, prayer and repentance. On the men's side—for the law of sex was observed to the point of segregation in all our churches—there was a sprinkling of men with red, strong, craggy faces who appeared to have the Adam clod highly developed in them, a world-muteness in expression that seemed to set them back in the garden and to hide them from God on account of their sins. On the other side there was more lightness, more life and hope expressed in the faces of the younger ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... do. There he lies, like a clod of earth; and there, too, will lie many more, in a few minutes. There is another! I did not notice him at first. Poor Dona Dolores! what ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ground—walking so slowly, and with his lean frame so bent that I might have supposed him ill if I had not remarked the steady movement of his head from right to left, and the alert touch with which he now and again displaced a clod of earth or a cluster of leaves. By-and-by he rose stiffly, and looked round him suspiciously; but by that time I had slipped behind a trunk, and was not to be seen; and after a brief interval he went back to his task, stooping over it more closely, if possible, than before, and applying ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... And the next step is spirit—Deity! I can command the lightning, and am dust! A monarch and a slave—a worm, a god! Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously Constructed and conceived? unknown! this clod Lives surely through some higher energy; For from itself alone ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... now stood confounded and silent, with, about them, a greyer, a more subdued, look which made all more resemble their fellows. In fact, to all had the atmosphere become oppressive, as though everyone's breast had had clamped into it a large, soft clod of humid, viscid earth. Until at last someone said in a low, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... good lady,' said he; 'if when this clock shall strike the hour of three, I shall be anything but a helpless clod, then upbraid me. Pray return now to your sister. Lady Ardagh is, indeed, much to be pitied; but what is past cannot now be helped. I have now a few papers to arrange, and some to destroy. I shall see you and Lady Ardagh before my death; try to compose her—her sufferings distress me much; but what ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... next moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft little rushing flight through the air—and it was the bird with the red breast flying to them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth quite near to ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which conquered brute and clod Shall fail not, but endure, Shall rise, though beaten to the sod, Shall hold its vantage sure— As sure as God, As sure ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... What merely living clod, what captive thing, Could up toward God through all its darkness grope, And find within its deadened heart to sing These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope? How did it catch that subtle undertone, That note in music heard not with the ears? How sound the elusive ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson |
