A Quote by Wilfred Owen

Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen

Quote Topics

Break Clay Earth Grew Made Sleep Sunbeams Tall Toil

Quote Author

Wilfred Owen
English - Soldier
March 18, 1893 - November 4, 1918

Futility Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved -still warm -too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

Wilfred Owen

A sleep without dreams, after a rough day of toil, is what we covet most; and yet How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay! The very Suicide that pays his debt at once without installments (an old way of paying debts, which creditors regret) Lets out impatiently his rushing breath, less from disgust of life than dread of death.

Lord Byron

This clay, so strong of heart, of sense so fine,Surely such clay is more than half divine--'Tis only fools speak evil of the clay,The very stars are made of clay like mine.

Omar Khayyam

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, morn of toil, nor night of waking.

Walter Scott

That result at the French was a big break for me. I had been playing quite well up until that point but nobody really expected me to do well on clay - it was my worst surface. I had had some success on the clay but I was a set and a break up in the semi-final against Jausovec and maybe the enormity of the occasion got to me.

Jo Durie

Clay can be a metaphor for many things. I made it a metaphor for flesh and earth, and these are two kinds of generic givens of life, if you look at it poetically, biblically, the idea of the life of beings, of man, being transitory, the earth abides-ashes to ashes, dust to dust-man returns to earth, grows out of earth like a flower, wilts, goes back to the earth... We are frail, transitory creatures with aspirations of immortality, conscious of our inevitable death, and we have to deal with it somehow.

Stephen De Staebler

I love the flesh. I'm a pagan. "Who are they who speak evil of the clay? The very stars are made of clay like mine!"

Jack London

Man's books are but man's alphabet, Beyond and on his lessons lie - The lessons of the violet, The large gold letters of the sky; The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil: The toil that nature ever taught, The patient toil, the constant stir, The toil of seas where shores are wrought, The toil of Christ, the carpenter; The toil of God incessantly By palm-set land or frozen sea.

Joaquin Miller

To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.

Washington Irving

People ask me what it's like to be tall, and I don't know what to say because I don't know any different. I grew up in a very tall house, so I wasn't an anomaly there.

Elizabeth Debicki

Go to sleep, baby,Mama will sing. Of blue butterflies, and dragonfly wings. Moonlight and sunbeams, raiments so fine. Silver and gold, for baby of mine. Go to sleep, baby. Sister will tell, of wolves and of lambs, and demons who fell.-Pierce's Lullaby Kim Harrison (Black Magic Sanction)

Kim Harrison

I had a fear of being too tall because my dad is very tall, and both my sisters are very tall. And they're drop-dead gorgeous, but I just didn't know if I, as Storm, wanted to be 6 feet tall, 'cause I feel like that's pretty tall.

Storm Reid

At night I dream that you and I are two plants that grew together, roots entwined, and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth, since we are made of earth and rain.

Pablo Neruda

Fare well we call to hearth and hall Though wind may blow and rain may fall We must away ere break of day Over the wood and mountain tall To Rivendell where Elves yet dwell In glades beneath the misty fell Through moor and waste we ride in haste And wither then we cannot tell With foes ahead behind us dread Beneath the sky shall be our bed Until at last our toil be sped Our journey done, our errand sped We must away! We must away! We ride before the break of day!