quotations about night
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE
To Night
The night ... it is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen, constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
O thievish Night,
Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars,
That nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely traveller?
JOHN MILTON
Comus
And I too under the stars,
Alone with the night again,
And the water's monotone;
I and the night alone,
And the world and the ways of men
Farther from me than the stars.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Veneta Marina"
Listen to them -- children of the night. What music they make.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft charms,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
Like some old poet's rhymes.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Hymn to the Night"
Oh each successive night that comes has something in it of an abandoned ember that is slowly burning out, and it falls swathed in ruins, surrounded by funereal objects.
PABLO NERUDA
The Night of the Soldier
The night comes for the purpose of checking our busy employment, and introducing an interval of repose between the links of our action and our aspiration. It draws its dim curtain around the field of toil. It buries the objects of our handiwork in darkness, and involves them with uncertainty. It comes to the relief of the exhausted body and the tired brain. Our powers, harmonizing with the diurnal revolutions of the earth, fail with the failing light, and a merciful Providence casts around us this mantle of shadow, and snatches us from our occupation.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Where the days are short ... the night is always looming.
SEBASTIAN AUGUST CAMPBELL
"God Mother", Loudwire, August 29, 2017
Oh, so soon we'd tire of sunshine,
If there were never night.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
The wind stirs. Night clouds obscure the universe. A lower music now, a different kind of death. No stars tonight, my love.
ELIZABETH REDFERN
The Music of the Spheres
Night is day. I open my eyes. No more pills. Day is night. I can hear the rain falling. Hide from sight. Night is day. I can see the sun shining. No more pills. Day is night. I close my eyes.
DAVID PEACE
Tokyo Year Zero
The longest way must have its close -- the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Uncle Tom's Cabin