Weekend Words: Lane
"The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand."
This week saw opening arguments in the trial of two ex-officials from the administration of Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who are accused of conspiring to close access lanes to the George Washington bridge in September 2013.
Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.
—Luke 4:21 (KJV)
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Time Does Not Bring Relief”
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
—W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening”
A shady lane
Everybody wants one
A shady lane
Everybody needs one
Oh my God
It’s everybody’s God
The worlds collide
And all that
We want is a shady lane
—Stephen Malkmus for Pavement, “Shady Lane”
Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
—Oscar Wilde
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
—Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night”
I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes.
—George Carlin
I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage.
—W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
The last time I saw him he was walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand.
—Fred Allen
