Muddle

“ Am I not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to turn—to other beasts like him?—sitting patiently around, grinning and slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the mud? ”

“ That day the old beliefs rose up and asserted themselves, and the earth was flat again—ditch-riddled, stagnant, and deadly flat. The undeviating roads crawled straight and white, elms dressed themselves stiffly along inflexible hedges, all nature, centrifugal no longer, sprawled flatly in lines out to its farthest edge, and I felt just like walking out to that terminus, and dropping quietly off. ”

“ The coming and going of phantom forms, the tramping of many feet, a great marching to and fro, the sound of laughter and the noise of weeping, a mixing and mingling of gaiety and grief, of poverty and pomp, of sunshine and shadow, of life and death. But everywhere things seem topsy turvy. ”

“ They will be encouraged to go to the "highways and hedges" for their omens, to the felicitous encounters of the common road for their auguries and inspirations. They will listen reverently to the chatter of very simple people, and catch the shadow of the wings of fate falling upon very homely heads. The rough earth-wisdom of ploughed fields, heavy with brown sun-lit mud, will be redolent for them with whispers and hints and intimations of things that no philosophy can include and no psychology explain. ”

“ To their windows, as scattering the mud you race.
Wingless sparrows and, like them, brown,
Bullied, then bullying—when ye are grown,
What is the outcome? Make it known.
Brothers, gather these waifs of the street,
Wash off their mudstains, make them meet,
With strengthened minds, our minds to greet. ”

“ On, on, on—on through the heat and the crowd and the dust—on, or they will be trampled down, and lost—on, with throbbing brain and tottering limbs—on, till the heart grows sick, and the eyes grow blurred, and a gurgling groan tells those behind they may close up another space. ”

“ She saw the ditches, like long graves dug for the living, where the weary, listless men stood knee-deep in mud, hoping for wounds that would relieve them from the ghastly monotony of their existence; the holes of muddy water where the dead things lay, to which they crept out in the night to wash a little of the filth from their clammy bodies and their stinking clothes; the holes dug out of the mud in which they ate and slept and lived year after year: till brain and heart and soul seemed to have died out of them, and they remembered with an effort that they once were men. ”

“ Knowing, what all experience serves to show,
No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
You have heard harsher voices and more loud,
As all must, not sworn liegemen of the crowd,
And far aloof your silent mind could keep
As when, in heavens with winter-midnight deep,
The perfect moon hangs thoughtful, nor can know
What hounds her lucent calm drives mad below.{52}
But to my business, while you rub your eyes
And wonder how you ever thought me wise.
Dear friend and old, they say you shake your head
And wish some bitter words of mine unsaid:
I wish they might be,—there we are agreed ”

“ With the breaking of the silent dawn, shadowed in a lonely archway or on an abandoned doorstep the wet, bedraggled body of a hapless moth is sometimes found, her iridescent wings flattened in the mud. Then for a brief moment a cry of protest, or scorn, or pity goes up. The passers-by raise their hands in anger, draw their skirts aside in horror, or kneel in tenderness. ”

“ Beyond, lies a certain Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep,—in a word, of unknown bottom,—on which the lamp-light does not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched, in the gradual growth of its horrors, from morn till nightfall. ”

“ The threat is soon forgotten; the shadow soon passes, and our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or play in the mud, as bests suits him, and in the veriest freedom. If he feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is clear ”

“ It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. ”

“ The races that band for plunder are the mud of the human stream.
The base and the coward and sordid, without an unselfish gleam.
It is mud that unites; but the sand is free—ay, every grain is free. ”

“ The horizon, blue and empty, melts into the pale sky and its breath is terribly cold upon the earth which is covered with frozen mud. The author's mind, like the autumn sun, shows up in hard outline the monotonous roads, the crooked streets, the little squalid houses in which tiny, miserable people are stifled by boredom and laziness and fill the houses with an unintelligible, drowsy bustle. ”

“ You have built up a wall of your own excellencies that you cannot see God; and then you cry, ‘He hath hidden Himself from me.’ Pull down your miserable mud walls, and let the light of Heaven shine in upon you. ”

“ And a glitter of heads in the sun!
"They are off — they are off!" is the roar,
As the cracks settle down to the race,
With the "yellow and black" to the fore,
And the Panic blood forcing the pace. ”

“ But hark, what sound is it which falls upon his ear, making him quake with fear, and, in spite of his aching ankle, creep farther behind the hay! It is a footstep—a light, tripping step, and it comes that way, nearer, nearer, until a shadow falls between the open chinks and the bright sunshine without. ”

“ After rambling over hills and rocks, through woods and swamps, and finding ourselves completely covered with mud, we made our way back, having encountered nothing worthy of note, and our bright anticipations, which we had long cherished, just about as near realized as thousands of others that we have had. But we must learn wisdom by experience, we thought, and thus consoled ourselves. ”

“ The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on—and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has witnessed it, can ever forget! ”

“ All the gracious sunshine of yesterday is obliterated, forgotten, while in its place the sullen raindrops dash themselves with suppressed fury against the window-panes. Huge drops they are, swollen with the hidden rage of many days, that fall, and burst heavily, and make the casements tremble. ”

“ When I crept over the hill, broken with tears.
⁠When I crouched down on the grass, dumb in despair,
I heard the soft croon of the wind bend to my ears,
⁠I felt the light kiss of the wind touching my hair. ”

“ Footsore, muddy to the eyes, hungry, thirsty as we were—our clothes of the stage sodden with rain, our finery like wet weeds, our face-powder like mud and our paints like soup—we must perforce open our packs, don our chill motley, daub our weary faces, and caper through some piece of tomfoolery which, if it had not been so insipid, would have been grotesquely indecent. ”

“ And all the world becomes a flaming hill.
Surely the driest dust must turn and thrill
When these wild breezes sweep out all despair—
And lakes are bluest, pools are starriest where
The streaming heavens overflow and spill. ”

“ When the great angry waves arise,
In long low lines against the skies,
And, with a sullen motion,
Dash themselves against the rocks,
Raising a cloud of foam, which mocks
Their sullenness—then falling, dies. ”

“ Yet the mountain has the unrivalled advantage of silence. We accustom ourselves so quickly to the murmur of the torrents that roll at the bottom., and even that murmur is like the hidden refrain that accompanies a day-dream. ”

“ Ever the winds sigh and drop into those sun-swept silences. Ever the gorge lies motionless, unmoved, until I fear. It is a grim thing, unholy, terrible! It is human—some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown. ”

“ Dance to the waving cadence of a rod.
As the sad sand upon the desert's verge,
Insensible to mortal grief and strife;
As the long weeds that float among the surge,
She folds indifference round her budding life. ”

“ I wander less in my thoughts, am less dissipated, am aware how shallow was the current of my thoughts before. Deep streams are dark, as if there were a cloud in their sky; shallow ones are bright and sparkling, reflecting the sun from their bottoms. ”

“ Instead of the music of the wind among the spruce-tops and the tinkling of the waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these poor, deluded, self-burdened men. Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself ”

“ The winding sheet that lies upon the white hills hides the promise as well as the sorrow. The great mystery of earth’s fecundity that is under the chaste raiment of the snow is the mystery of all life, and to it the questioning soul must ever come. ”

“ Awkward and solemn clearness, making louder the unnecessary cries, the hoarse laughter of the invisible harlots in their muddy yard, pointing a cool actual finger at the silly and ferocious group of man-shaped beings huddled in the mud under four or five little trees, came strangely in my own mind pleasantly to suggest the ludicrous and hideous and beautiful antics of the insane. ”

“ They are the first big drops that bespeak the coming flood that shall sweep our writer from all reason's moorings; the play of a lightning that shall blind man's wisdom to its own light; the sigh of a wind that soon shall develop into a very blast of despair. ”

“ I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. ”

“ The beasts get through every gap, and break every gate, and poach every damp path, and stir up the mud, so as to give broad hints that it is time they were kept at home, and all made tight behind them. ”

“ Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for human destiny have been broken. ”

“ Driving through such a country one is either going up, or going down, most of the time, and what might have been an easy pull up, and a slide down, resolved itself into a desperate struggle to get up, and a pull going down, on account of the mud. ”

“ Palleth upon my soul the jest,
Falleth upon my pen a blight.
The daily task has lost its zest,
And everything is flat and trite.
There’s nothing humorous in sight;
Don’t mind if I am dull to-day.
For every column is a fight
When woods are but a week away. ”

“ The cry is taken up by a hundred voices, and the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing through the mud, and rattling along the pavements; up go the windows, out run the people, onward bear the mob ”

“ There are noises that We do not understand,—mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefmable stirs and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness are outlined in monstrous proportions. ”

“ The first splash of mud we get, on entering the street, the first pettifogging shop-keeper that cheats us out of twopence, and the whole vanishes clean out of our remembrance, and we become the idle prey of the most petty and annoying circumstances. The mind soars by an effort to the grand and lofty: it is at home, in the grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. ”

“ And while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;⁠10
But chief when evening scenes decay
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine. ”

“ A lull of a few seconds follows, and then the broad, mighty torrent of the wind bursts upon them in its uninterrupted fury, and for a while it seems as if they must be swept away by its persistent, tremendous force. ”

“ The earth breaks into warty mounds, grass tufted, and falls to sudden hollows slakish with caked mud. I walk, and though I have not seen his form save for that moment at the door of my house, I know the white head man following at my rear, and leading, keeping pace with my feet so that the sound of his steps is lost in mine. ”

“ Runs ever panting, nor attains the goal.
So thought I, and was sorrowful at heart.
Since then my steps have visited that flood
Along whose shore the numerous footfalls cease,
The voices and the tears of life expire. ”