Life is mostly froth and bubble

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.

from 'Ye Wearie Wayfarer'
by Adam Lindsay Gordon, 1833 - 1870

I first heard the quote in dialogue in the play Boston Marriage by David Mamet that L acted in earlier in the year.

There was something in the washing up bowl foam that made me think of a human crowd, perhaps reminiscent of Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles. Like the crush of faces outside a football ground, waiting to get in, or people standing at a railway station, looking up at the departures board. Something basic about humanity on this day, 9/11, that showed the worst and best of human beings.