I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Each and All.

Thick as autumnal leaves or driving sand.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book ii. Line 970.

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

So the little minutes, humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages of eternity.

Julia A Fletcher Carney: Little Things, 1845.

From Greenland's icy mountains,

From India's coral strand,

Where Afric's sunny fountains

Roll down their golden sand.

Reginald Heber (1783-1826): Missionary Hymn.

She is mine own,

And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,

The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act ii. Sc. 4.