“It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung; It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs; Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung; It glared around with fierce electric eyes. Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed out for more; It looked like some great monster in the gloom.””
“If I can with confidence sayThat still for another day,Or even another year,I will be there for you, my dear,It will be because, though smallAs measured against the All,I have been so instinctively thoroughAbout my crevice and burrow.””
“Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly,”
“Was I not mad, after all, for journeying to this place, of my own free will? “And all for what? Original lust? Die before trying as a matter of trust, I see with staked hands a man before us, who fixes, and features and burrows a bribe, like a Pallas Athene, a winter-crossed bride.””
“One bright afternoon, near a place called Krek, Converse had watched with astonishment as the world of things transformed itself into a single overwhelming act of murder. In a manner of speaking he had discovered himself. Himself was a soft shell-less quivering thing encased in a hundred and sixty pounds of pink sweating meat. It was real enough. It tried to burrow into the earth. It wept.””
“species, quite unusual. He was last seen burrowing into sandy loam near Point Judith. Sonar followed him for several months, all the way to central Pennsylvania.””