Careful Words

clay (n.)

clay (v.)

Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,

He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Princess. Part vii. Line 308.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.

The sightless Milton, with his hair

Around his placid temples curled;

And Shakespeare at his side,—a freight,

If clay could think and mind were weight,

For him who bore the world!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Italian Itinerant.

This is the porcelain clay of humankind.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Don Sebastian. Act i. Sc. 1.

The precious porcelain of human clay.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto iv. Stanza 11.

  Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

New Testament: Romans ix. 21.

A fiery soul, which, working out its way,

Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,

And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high

He sought the storms.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 156.

Var.  By hands unseen the knell is rung;

By fairy forms their dirge is sung.