Loam Quotes

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined - just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the Drummer never knew - Fresh from his Wessex home - The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge forever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally. (Thomas Hardy)
Now present here, the future takes its time. The brittle insect scrapes at the dry loam; All is burnt up, used up, drawn up in air To some ineffably rarefied solution . . . Life is enlarged, drunk with annihilation, And bitterness is sweet, and the spirit clear.
Paul Valéry
And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an "open” city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there. But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then tens of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. ... Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men.
Kurt Vonnegut
He didn't want to learn another thing. Motionless, he constantly stared at the same spot, unseeing. He breathed as if the air were loam. ...he no longer wanted to be quick. ...he wanted to slow down until he died. ...Outside the passage of time... until they'd think him dead. ...The alterations of day and night would finally become just a flickering... John sucked in the air and held his breath. ...everything would be as it had been before his birth. He would have never been.
Sten Nadolny
The body is the soul's poor house or home, whose ribs the laths are and whose flesh the loam.
Robert Herrick (poet)
The purest treasure mortal time afford Is spotless reputation that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
William Shakespeare
In the city set upon slime and loam, They cry in their Parliament, "Who goes home?" And there comes no answer in arch or dome, For none in the city of graves goes home. Yet these shall perish and understand, For God has pity on this great land.
G. K. Chesterton
And where is now that palace gone, All the magical skill'd stone, All the dreaming towers wrought By Love as if no more than thought The unresisting marble was? How could such a wonder pass? Ah, it was but built in vain Against the stupid horns of Rome, That pusht down into the common loam The loveliness that shone in Spain. But we have raised it up again! A loftier palace, fairer far, Is ours, and one that fears no war. Safe in marvellous walls we are; Wondering sense like builded fires, High amazement of desires, Delight and certainty of love, Closing around, roofing above Our unapproacht and perfect hour Within the splendours of love's power.
Lascelles Abercrombie