“Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

"God's Grandeur", lines 5-8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

English poet 1844–1889

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“You shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest,
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was “the scourge of God.””

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

"The Dirge of Alaric, the Visigoth" In The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal Vol. V, No. 25 (January-June 1823), p. 64.

“Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to whorship God.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

Stanza 10.
The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/landing_of_the_pilgrim_fathers.html (1826)

“Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 30.

“Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 789
Endymion (1818)
Context: Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago a giant battle was;
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
Feel we these things? — that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity: the crown of these
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.

“Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on?”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

“Someone got killed up here…. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter."
"How’d you know all that?"
"I just trod on ‘im.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god
Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod
Or thundered through the skies — aught else for share
Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear
The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest
Of the world's spring-tide in thy conscious breast?”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god
Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod
Or thundered through the skies — aught else for share
Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear
The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest
Of the world's spring-tide in thy conscious breast?
No, thou hadst grasped thy lot with all its pain,
Nor loosed it any painless lot to gain
Where music's voice was silent; for thy fate
Was human music's self incorporate:
Thy senses' keenness and thy passionate strife
Were flesh of her flesh and her womb of Life.

“I approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant light; and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath, and the Gods of heaven, and stood near, and worshipped them.”
Accessi confinium mortis et calcato Proserpinae limine per omnia vectus elementa remeavi, nocte media vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine, deos inferos et deos superos accessi coram et adoravi de proximo.

Apuleius book The Golden Ass

Bk. 11, ch. 23; pp. 239-40.
Describing initiation into the mysteries of Isis.
Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)

“Some write their wrongs in marble: he more just,
Stoop’d down serene and wrote them in the dust,—
Trod under foot, the sport of every wind,
Swept from the earth and blotted from his mind.
There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie,
And grieved they could not ’scape the Almighty eye.”

Samuel Madden (1686–1765) Irish writer

Boulter's Monument (1745), dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had been Madden's student.

“Ere now a simple tiller of the soil
Hath spoken words of wisdom to mankind;
A cloak all tattered and besmirched with toil
Hath ofttimes clothed a man of prudent mind.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Ha qualche volta un ortolan parlato
Cose molte a proposito a la gente;
E da un mantel rotto e sporco e stato
Molte volte coperto un uom prudente.
LVIII, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

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“Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”