Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.
The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seat beside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveler, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.
The sun is set; and in his latest beams Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold, Slowly upon the amber air unrolled, The falling mantle of the Prophet seems.
The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls.
As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd ev'ry shade.
You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. -Sonnet 73
When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence.
Thy soul is by vile fear assailed, which oft so overcasts a man, that he recoils from noblest resolution, like a beast at some false semblance in the twilight gloom.