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Because summer nights are so lovely with the scent of flowers and newly mowed grass, they are something to celebrate at this time of year. When it is raining lightly and the sound of leaves rustling comes through the open window along with the breeze, I love to just listen. Night birds, coyotes, and frogs sing me to sleep.
To savor the part of books where the characters are traveling or experiencing various kinds of night adventures is something that I usually enjoy. The lights along the shore as seen from boats, the moon sending its path across the water, the night as a creature in itself are always intriguing images.
Besides having many beautiful descriptions, night is a metaphor for sorrow and death. And yet, night is a welcome time to rest and to sleep or to sit out under the stars. Different stories have different thoughts about the night. For some it is fearsome, for those in pain it is tedious, for those who cannot sleep, it is torture. In some stories the city never sleeps and the night is full of people. Many people work late shifts at night and see the night differently. I was a night owl and I was more awake at night. My brain works better at night for some reason.
I enjoy the descriptions of night in books from all over the world. I sink into the descriptions and feel at home.
Thoughts about the night:
Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Above the tower - a lone, twice-sized moon.
On the cold river passing night-filled homes,
It scatters restless gold across waves...
Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars,
Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon
Spreading in my old garden.... All light,
All ten thousand miles at once in its light!
Tu Fu
How lovely are the portals of the night,
When stars come out to watch the daylight die.
Thomas Cole
With finger on her solemn lip,
Night hushed the shadowy earth.
Margaret Deland
The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn
With the sunset's fire.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
'Tis midnight now. The bent and broken moon,
Batter'd and black, as from a thousand battles,
Hangs silent on the purple walls of Heaven.
Joaquin Miller
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
Joseph Conrad
Quotations above are all from:
http://www.quotesdonkey.com/...
There are sad things that the night represents, too, expressed beautifully by our poets.
Acquainted With the Night
Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
And Frost’s most famous tribute to night:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
By Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
There is
Night by Elie Weisel that chronicles the horror of the Holocaust.
I love the essays in The Night Country by Loren Eiseley
A lovely book review is here:
Book Review – The Night Country
Deb Derrick
http://www.eiseley.org/...
I loved the book The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is fun to see live.
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music. (2.1.149)
More Shakespeare on night:
Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d
I cried to dream again
The Tempest (3.2.96-104)
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest (4.1.168-170)
...When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Act III, Scene 2
Lovely are the stars in his paintings:
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
Vincent Van Gogh
Here is the lovely, haunting musical tribute to Van Gogh by Don McLean:
http://www.youtube.com/...
"Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)"
Lyrics are here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/...
So when night falls in a book, I get interested in what might happen. Often there are scary things, but I like it when people enjoy the night, too.
What do you like about night?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! Doing what we do worst.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
DK VA Hospital Support Project: Book Drive! Got Used Books to Give?
by Sara R
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Please send books that are in good condition.
Attn. Mr. William R. Browning, Volunteer Coordinator
John D. Dingell VAMC
4646 John R Street
Detroit, MI 48201
Sara says:
Please put a note in the box saying the donation is from a DK member in connection with the July 18 donation of quilts, scarves and teddy bears.
NOTE:
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