The cloudless day is richer at its close;
A golden glory settles on the lea;
Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool repose
To mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.

And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light,
The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines;
Freed form the noonday glare, the favour’d sight
Increasing grace in earth and sky divines.

But ere the purest radiance crowns the green,
Or fairest lustre fills th’ expectant grove,
The twilight thickens, and the fleeting scene
Leaves but a hallow’d memory of love!

There is in stillness oft a magic power
To calm the breast, when struggling passions lower;
Touch'd by its influence, in the soul arise
Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.

The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through 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, fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

O Night! most beautiful and rare! Thou givest the heavens their holiest hue,
And through the azure fields of air Bring’st down the gentle dew.

How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night-wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony.

Let us then love stillness, my brethren,

The evening is the time to praise the day

In the night which calms all the efforts

Time unfolds in light. In the morning, light clears all the outside darkness and the shape of each thing emerges in the brightened emptiness. Light identifies itself completely with the voyage of a day; its transparency puts the day out in the open. There is nowhere for a day to hide; it is exposed every minute to the revelations of light. Perhaps this is why twilight appears gracious; when light abandons the day, it does not believe that it will ever return and consequently permits itself an extravagant valediction in a huge ritual of colour. The silence of twilight is striking because the flourish of the colouring has the grandeur of music.

O precious is the pause between the winds that come and go, And sweet the silence of the shores between the ebb and flow.