Day

“ Day was dawning when Psyche awoke, and high up in the bright air the larks were singing their morning hymn to the sun, and calling on bird and beast and flower to awake and rejoice in the glad daylight. ”

“ The day has been considered as an image of the year, and the year as the representation of life. The morning answers to the spring, and the spring to childhood and youth; the noon corresponds to the summer, and the summer to the strength of manhood. ”

“ PHILIP AND MILDRED
Lingering fade the rays of daylight, and the listening air is chilly;
Voice of bird and forest murmur, insect hum and quivering spray
Stir not in that quiet hour: through the valley, calm and stilly,
All in hushed and loving silence watch the slow departing Day. ”

“ For in the high day the quivering bright air is more opaque than the dim spaces of night, so tranquil and severe, or the glowing kingdoms of the morning. At the springing of the day the eyes open upon awakening flowers, giving filial heed to the marvellous earth which waits in patience for a human greeting. ”

“ The spring advanced. Each evening whispered of a new beauty, each night saw the birth of a new mystery, each morning revealed it in nature's mirror, each day bespoke some completion of beauty, some fulfillment of hope. ”

“ The morning star slid down towards the east, paling by degrees in the young day's increasing light, and the earth lay silent like a slumbering, unpeopled world, as if it were still the morning hour of paradise, before the time of Adam and Eve, and their restless children! ”

“ A DULL SUNDAY
(After Debussy)
IT has been a long day,
A long, long day;
And now in floods of twilight,
In long green waves of sunset softly flowing,
Evening.
It is evening over the great towns,
It is evening in our hearts. ”

“ The new year shall yet be summer;
The night shall be followed by day;
And the soul that shall live forever
From the earth shall speed away.
The earth is the night and the winter,
And heaven is summer and day ”

“ Presently the first smile of day salutes and awakens mother earth; a murmur of contentment thrills the air in harmony of praise: the dimming, quivering stars, the crimson mountain-tops, the purple and azure perspective between, all creation combines in a song of thanksgiving. The mystic planetary music, the singing together of earth and heaven in melody of colour and sound, welcomes the bright morning. ”

“ No wonder the god of day, that rises so bright and cheery of mornings, sets at eve blushing rosy red at the enormities he beholds; no wonder Nature at even-time rains down her dewy tears, and dons the mourning garb of night, sending the indulgent moon to shade away monstrosities or else to gild and beautify. ”

“ The same equable and constant motion urges the orb of our lives from morning to noon, and from noon to evening. The glory of the dawning day, with its golden clouds and its dewy freshness, its new awakened hopes and its unworn vigour, climbs by silent, inevitable stages to the hot noon. ”

“ What a natural and touching thought, then, to associate a holy memory with the hour that links day with night!—the hour of twilight, when the dazzling sunlight is fading away, work is suspended, and propitious leisure brings on long, sweet, and sometimes dangerous reveries! ”

“ Those early on the hill-side see the gray lighten and watch it flush to rose—the advent of the day-spring—and go on picking flowers. They of the clocks are one day older—these have seen a sunrise. There is the difference. ”

“ It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunset,—the evening star following with silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air, with a fancy that kindles and soars into the heavens before him,—there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening shadows. ”

“ The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past : there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind. ”

“ The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. ”

“ Day after day the sun rose fierce and pitiless, drinking up at a draught what scanty dews had distilled in a night so brief and heated that it brought no refreshment to herbage or to man. Day after day wistful eyes searched the horizon for a cloud if no bigger than a man's hand, and still only the hard blue above and the palpitating horizon line stared blankly back. ”

“ The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. ”

“ Day, with its fierce glories, brings the throbbing silence of intense life, and under flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of Nature, the cultivator lives his day-dream. What there is of squalor, and drudgery, and carking care in his life melts into a brief oblivion, and he is a man in the presence of his God with the holy stillness of Nature brooding over him. ”

“ The blue sky overhead flecked with the lightest of summer clouds, the buoyant air, the sun-steeped landscape, the general brightness and cheerfulness of the day, impressed us with an indefinable but very real joyousness and light-heartedness. ”

“ THE EVENING LARK. For the Table Book.
I love thee better at this hour, when rest
Is shadowing earth, than e’en the nightingale:
The loudness of thy song that in the morn
Rang over heaven, the day has softened down
To pensive music.
In the evening, the body relaxed by the toil of the day, disposes the mind to quietness and contemplation. The eye, dimmed by close application to books or business, languishes for the greenness of the fields; the brain, clouded by the smoke and vapour of close rooms and crowded streets, droops for the fragrance of fresh breezes, and sweet smelling flowers. ”

“ It is the longest day, with the rich freight that it carries in its bosom, and leading by the hand the early dawn blushing with rosy light, and melodious with the carolling of larks at one o'clock in the morning. ”

“ Day speeds to night and night will bring new day. An emptier day for empty eyes in this place and in that, but a new day none the less. Will not fresh waters be flowing from the mountain sources, and other waves hurtle against the shores? It is only the caretaker's dog who prowls unhappily among the graves, wondering dimly at all this to-do. ”

“ One day the familiar features of the landscape will take on an expression of gladness, some other day of dullness; and the more we study the features, the more variable will their expression appear from hour to hour, day to day, and season to season.
I spoke just now of the movement of the atmosphere. It is a fluid, that one day may be as still as a forest pool, another day may be stirred like the
Light and Shade. ”

“ Day is daily swallowed up by Night, to be set free again at dawn, and from time to time suffers a like but shorter durance in the maw of the Eclipse and the Storm-cloud; 335Summer is overcome and prisoned by dark Winter, to be again set free. ”

“ Let the earth put forth grass and herbs and trees bearing fruit. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.—And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. ”

“ Day follows day like the ripples on the sea; years crowd upon years like the breakers on the beach, and every hundredth wave announces with a louder and a deeper roar, that lo! another century hath come and gone. ”

“ The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary. ”

“ Spring and morning, summer and noon, autumn and evening, winter and night, are coupled together, as if each season was specially characterised by a single portion of the day, selected for no other reason than because the order of succession is the same. ”

“ These moments increase rapidly, yet one hardly appreciates that the sun is departing until day and night are of equal length, for the night remains light, though not cheerful. Then the day rapidly shortens and darkens, and the sun sinks until at last there is but a mere glimmer of the glory of day. ”

“ Of all the periods marked out by the motions of the celestial bodies, the most conspicuous, and the most intimately connected with the affairs of mankind, are the solar day, which is distinguished by the diurnal revolution of the earth and the alternation of light and darkness, and the solar year, which completes the circle of the seasons. ”

“ To the luminous day succeeds the gloomy night, and then again to the dark night the luminous day; to summer succeeds winter, and to winter summer; to white black, and to black white; to heat cold, and to cold heat. ”

“ In the forest, every hour of the night and day is the Creator present to the eye. Surrounded by the works of man, we sometimes lose sight of our Maker, and do not always properly appreciate his attributes. I have said that the morning gives life and activity to myriads of his creatures, who declare his power; but not less expressive is the hour of tranquillity—the hour of noon. ”

“ As the first working day of the week, I begin all business; and I have always heard that if a thing is well begun, it is half done. People call me Moon-day—isn't that a pretty name, the day of the moon? How beautiful the moon is, riding in her silver chariot across the dark blue sky! I am proud of my name. The moon is constantly changing and I like change. I like brightness and cleanliness too, and good housewives wash their clothes on Monday. ”

“ It is the time of day, too, when the spirits are freshest and highest, animated by the prospect of the work, the difficulties, the pleasures, or the adventures of the day that has begun; and cheered by that cool, clear buoyancy of Nature which belongs exclusively to the happy morning hours, and has led poets in all ages to compare these hours to the first sweet months of spring or the early years of childhood. ”

“ The sky, grey in autumn, snowy in winter, and golden in spring, corresponds to the grey sky of evening, the silver one of night, and the golden one of morning. Spring is the dawn of the year; the primitive myth is but amplified; the last hour of the day awakens the aurora; the last month of the solar year awakens the spring. The application of the myth of the day to the year is one of the greatest simplicity. ”

“ The day happened to be Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness around me, and thought how it had grown and changed, and how the little wild-flowers had been forming, and the voices of the birds had been strengthening, by day and by night, under the sun and under the stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my bed, the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed there came like a check upon my peace. ”

“ 'T was night, but night which the imperial moon,
Regal in her full beauty, turn'd to noon,
But still the noon of midnight; though the ray
Was clear and bright, it was not that of day; ”

“ The day on which thou [Pg 837] camest into the world can indeed be called a day of salvation, a day of grace. Thou art fair as the moon; the moon illumines the night with the light it receives from the sun, and thou enlightenest our darkness with the splendor of thy virtues. ”

“ We count the months by the changes in the moon; and our earth's journey around the sun marks our years and seasons. We all rejoice in a bright sunny day, though the sun is too bright and glorious for us to bear to gaze at him ”

“ When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering. O, ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky ”

“ Why tell of autumnal storms and stars, and when now the day is briefer and the summer softer, what watches men must keep? or when showerful spring pours down, when the spiky harvest even now ripples on the plains, and when the green blade swells with her milky grain? ”

“ They surprise me day after day, like some new and brilliant phenomenon, though the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit contracted of the hour, are almost always the same. The day, in these countries where life flows so thickly, is engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present. ”

“ Day, like a weary pilgrim, had reached the westerngate of Heaven, and Evening stooped down to unloose the latchets of his sandal-shoon. ”

“ In order to reproduce our four hours one would have to bring together the minutes from a hundred summer-houses and hunting-lodges, and even then the description would limp. Morning twilight is to the day what spring is to summer, evening twilight to the night, autumn to winter. ”