"Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud... And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. " — Shakespeare
"I made all my generals out of mud." — Napoleon Bonaparte
"We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars." — Ivan Turgenev
"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." — Charles de Gaulle
"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance..." — Thoreau
"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?" — Virginia Woolf
"They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies." — Orson Welles
"POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." — Ambrose Bierce (from "The Devil's Dictionary")
"'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.' Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." — John 9:5-7
"The broad-backed hippopotamus/Rests on his belly in the mud..." — T.S. Eliot
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.
The ’potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo’s voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way—
The Church can sleep and feed at once.
I saw the ’potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
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18 comments:
I'm trying to think of a line of poetry -- Yeats, I think -- that puts man between mud (or dirt) and angels.
Damn. Twenty some odd years ago, I could have given you chapter and verse. I used the line to set up my senior thesis, and now it's lost.
Anybody know of a digitized concordance for the works of Yeats?
Dragged by the mud
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075683/The-brave-women-Middle-East-Female-protesters-brutally-beaten-metal-poles-vicious-soldiers-drag-girls-streets-hair-day-shame.html
Mubarak must go
A novel is a mirror that strolls along a highway. Now it reflects the blue of the skies, now the mud puddles underfoot
The mud is better than the stars
As home is better than afar;
The spirit of insouciant adventure
Ends covered with scars.
Then was the creation and the formation. Of earth, of mud, they made [man's] flesh. But they saw that it was not good. It melted away, it was soft, did not move, had no strength, it fell down, it was limp, it could not move its head, its face fell to one side, its sight was blurred, it could not look behind. At first it spoke, but had no mind. Quickly it soaked in the water and could not stand.
And the Creator and the Maker said: "Let us try again because our creatures will not be able to walk nor multiply. Let us consider this," they said.
Then they broke up and destroyed their work and their creation. And they said: "What shall we do to perfect it, in order that our worshipers, our invokers, will be successful?"
The sun goes down
The moon comes out
The folks gather round
And the all begin to shout
Hey, hey, Uncle Dud
It's a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied (rolling in the mud)
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.
Some mud aspires to be the great edifice from where it had begun.
But humble mud aspires to only remain unslung.
in Just-
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman
whistles far and wee
e.e. cummings
Some people say a man is made out of mud
A poor man's made out of muscle and blood
Scripture says that God made man from a perfect mud model that He had fashioned in His own image and that then forcefully breathed the breath Of God ( a/k/a His Spirit) into its nostrils.
That sounds sorta like my C=Pack machine that is just what my aging mud needs at night to get rest.
Also, the mud that man is made from is the lowliest possible material. Adam means mud. When the inbreathed spirit leaves a Adam descendant's body, it becomes a horrible, corrupt,terrible smelling slime that soon returns to the dust from which it was formed.
God's reason for that was to teach the angels a lesson in humility, especially the angel Lucifer who was the most beautiful work of art God made to the point he became proud, rebelled, and grabbed authority.
And God then defeated Lucifer's rebellion with the human called the Second Adam.
I had become accustomed to Google helping me connect some random recollection with the exact quote based on little more than a few keywords.
I wonder if that mostly works for things written (and posted online) since the mid 1990s, however, as this search for the bit of Yeats poetry is not working out for me.
Of course, it's not Google that's failing me. I have forgotten something I once knew, and I can't remember enough of it for Google to help me.
As I ruminate, I think perhaps the line I am looking for might include the words spit and dust.
Google thinks that perhaps I meant to spell yeast or years instead of Yeats.
Argh.
When darkness falls and the fear comes out
and your soul's at risk don't dare to shout
hold your mud... hold your mud
When your lover screams that you're a fool
and you start to tremble and drip that drool
hold your mud... hold your mud
Oh sweet Jesus what's the use? Of living right such abuse...
hold your mud... hold your mud
When you're out scrounging for your next meal
and a busker asks "well how does it feel?"
hold your mud... hold your mud... hold your mud... hold your mud
Cast Iron Soul
"POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." — Ambrose Bierce (from "The Devil's Dictionary")
This is wonderful and horrible.
Wonderful in its perfect description of those creatures who populate Washington, and horrible in that it shows us the breed persists: they were, they are, they ever will be.
At the mud-pie cafe...you can mud if you want to.
Chorus from "The Hippopotamus Song" by Flanders and Swann:
Mud, mud, glorious mud,
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!
So follow me, follow, down to the hollow
And there let us wallow in glorious mud!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjnOj9O16_I#t=1m11s
wv: subtrane
We have one of those here in Chicagoe.
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