Dark

“ Thrilling with awe, he glared into the darkness. The night was dark, and there in the shade of the tall firs and shrubberies, the shadows were dense. He could barely distinguish the outlines of his own hand. ”

“ Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threatens his bloody stage: by the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is 't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb, ⁠9
When living light should kiss it? ”

“ Dark lies the earth, and bright with worlds the sky: That soft, large, lustrous star, that first outshone, Still holds us spelled with potent sorcery. Dilating, shrinking, lightening, it hath won Our spirit with its strange strong influence, And sways it as the tides beneath the moon. ”

“ If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,” darkness is not dark to thee, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to thee are both alike. ”

“ And it is at times as though a door were opened before it into a great brightness, through which the soul sees a light, after the manner of a lightning flash, which, on a dark night, reveals things suddenly, and causes them to be clearly and distinctly seen, and then leaves them in darkness, although the forms and figures of them remain in the fancy. ”

“ And so, on and on through endless transformations he passed, and he saw how the first world of dark elements crept in upon the world of beauty, clothing it around with grossness and veiling its fires; and the dark spirits entered by subtle ways into the spheres of the spirits of light, and became as a mist over memory and a chain upon speed; the earth groaned with the anguish. ”

“ Dark, like a lair where strong beasts had lurked and mated, lonely at night and lonely by day, left to themselves and their own intensity for so many generations. It seemed to cast a spell on the two young people. ”

“ Is there nothing at all like darkness to you? I am afraid when I think of this. This darkness which is to me real and strong as death—is this simply nothing to you? Then how can there be any union at all between us, in a place like this? ”

“ No shadows! Nothing real! No assurance of reality! only the dark—unbroken, formless, fearful; the dark which like grief, and forgetfulness, and selfishness, fives for itself only, without regard for the pain or joy or suffering of others; all the world else shut out; a fearful, shadowless thing in which all the beautiful realities of life are lost and blotted out. ”

“ Wheeling and darting, withdrawn, and sudden again outsped—
No one knew why—but I knew darkness then,
And saw the stars that hung so still; but when
I lay abed the old starless dark came back again.
Night is not night without the stars and moon. ”

“ But in the dark, not knowing the turnings, to feel one’s way among these things that were so like life and yet were not alive—to touch, perhaps, these faces that were not dead, and yet felt like death. ”

“ He commanded that the rays of light should penetrate the awful darkness, and there should alternately be night and day. The sun to shine by day and the moon to shine by night, to break the awful stillness of this once dark and cheerless world. ”

“ Perhaps darkness shall cover me; and night shall be light in my pleasures. But darkness shall not be dark to thee; and night shall be light as the day; the darkness thereof, and the light thereof, are alike to Thee. ”

“ The dark seems to rise upward from the earth. The sounds of men and beasts carry over long distance, drifting in among the trees, and the loneliness of the vast, empty earth comes back to us,—what is forgotten in the rush of the sunshine,—the constant loom of the mystery. ”

“ THIS type of enkindling will explain to us certain of the delectable effects which this dark night of contemplation works in the soul. For at certain times, as we have just said, the soul becomes enlightened in the midst of all this darkness, and the light shines in the darkness; [194] this mystical intelligence flows down into the understanding and the will remains in dryness—I mean, without actual union of love, with a serenity and simplicity which are so delicate and delectable to the sense of the soul that no name can be given to them. ”

“ In order to prove the first point, we must here assume a certain doctrine of the philosopher, which says that, the clearer and more manifest are Divine things in themselves the darker and more hidden are they to the soul naturally; just as, the clearer is the light, the more it blinds and darkens the pupil of the owl, and, the more directly we look at the sun, the greater is the darkness which it causes in our visual faculty, overcoming and overwhelming it through its own weakness. ”

“ Three things are, indeed, needed to form a shadow: light, a body, a dark place. The shadow of heaven forms the darkness of the world. Understand, I pray you, what I mean, by a simple example—by raising for yourself at midday a tent of some compact and impenetrable material, you shut yourself up in sudden darkness. ”

“ The fourteenth day of the dark half of a month, a dense forest, an overclouded sky, and midnight—these are the four kinds of darkness: darkness, however great each of these is, an ignorant man is darker still. ”

“ When, from within or from without, some dark vapor has risen up, clouding the sunlight, and casting the soul into darkness--when remorse, or despair, or bitter disappointment, or satiety, or the dark pall of grief, has overshadowed all things, and left us in a sort of twilight, where we see every surrounding object in gloom, we bless the gale, even though it be violent, that arises to sweep the tempest-cloud from our sky. ”

“ When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee, ”

“ And the Shadow of the Night and not Love was departed;
I was sore, I was weary, yet Love lived to seek;
So I scaled the dark mountains, and wandered sad-hearted
Over wearier wastes, where e'en sunlight was bleak,
With no rest of the night for my soul waxen weak. ”

“ Take heed, stand out no longer, lest he cause darkness, and lest thy feet stumble upon the dark mountains; and lest, while you look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness ”

“ THE darkness which the soul here describes relates, as we have said, to the desires and faculties, sensual, interior and spiritual, for all these are darkened in this night as to their natural light, so that, being purged in this respect, they may be illumined with respect to the supernatural. ”

“ Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark As we ourselves, thy darkest! We the young, In a little thought, in a little thought, At last confront thee, and ourselves in thee, And wake disgarmented of glory: as one On a mount standing, and against him stands, On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays, The golden sun, and they two brotherly Gaze each on each ”

“ The faithful, quiet voice, enduring through the dark, was a foreshadowing of the great cloud which was breaking over the world, big with disaster, imminent with gloom. It foreshadowed the divinely aided continuance of Truth through such a terror as men had never known before. ”

“ Nothing has been distorted or concealed, and if anything remains vague, it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind—that cloud and the nebulous nature of the horrors which brought it upon me. ”

“ Although born in darkness all seem to strive after light. Myriads of them collect round every burning lamp in the open air, to the great annoyance of the human being who attempts to read out of doors after dark. ”

“ Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. ”

“ I will not here omit to mention the reason why this Divine light, which is always light to the soul, illumines it not as soon as it strikes it, as it does afterwards, but causes it the darkness and the trials of which we have spoken. ”

“ "Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking;
Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking!" ”

“ So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death! ”

“ How oft and suddenly the shadows roll
From out the depths of some dim realm of woe,
To wrap their darkness round the human soul.
Those days are darker than the very night;
For nights have stars, and sleep, and happy dreams;
But these days bring unto the spirit-sight
The mysteries of gloom, until it seems
The light is gone forever, and the dark
Hangs like a pall of death above the soul,
Which rocks amid the gloom like storm-swept bark,
And sinks beneath a sea where tempests roll.
____ Winter on the Atlantic.
A Reverie ["Did I dream of a song? or sing in a dream?"] ”

“ And it must be remembered that the first stanza, speaking of the sensual part, says that the soul went forth upon ‘a dark night,’ and here, speaking of the spiritual part, it says that it went forth ‘in darkness.’ For the darkness of the spiritual part is by far the greater, even as darkness is a greater obscurity than that of night. ”

“ If therefore the light (of thine eye) that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness! For the rest of the body which is naturally dark, since it has no light except from the eyes, if it be deprived of them, how dark must it be! ”

“ I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. ”

“ And, by thus leaving it empty and in darkness, it purges and illumines it with Divine spiritual light, although the soul thinks not that it has this light, but believes itself to be in darkness, even as we have said of the ray of light, which although it be in the midst of the room, yet, if it be pure and meet nothing on its path, is not visible. ”

“ Twilight fell, bye and bye, and then the dark shadows of night. ”

“ The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings. ”

“ His time of tempting is in the darknesses. For you know well that beside the full night, which is the deep dark, there are two times of darkness, the one ere the morning wax light, the other when the evening waxeth dark. ”

“ The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! ”

“ CHAPTER V Sets down the first line and begins to explain how this dark contemplation is not only night for the soul but is also grief and torment.
THIS dark night is an inflowing of God into the soul, which purges it from its ignorances and imperfections, habitual natural and spiritual, and which is called by contemplatives infused contemplation, or mystical theology. Herein God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in perfection of love without its doing anything, or understanding of what manner is this infused contemplation. ”