Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Twilight
The sunbeams dropped
Their gold, and, passing in porch and niche,
Softened to shadows, silvery, pale, and dim,
As if the very Day paused and grew Eve.
Edwin Arnold—Light of Asia. Bk. II. L. 466.
Fair Venus shines
Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood
Of softened radiance from her dewy locks.
Anna Letitia Barbauld—A Summer Evening’s Meditation. L. 10.
The summer day is closed, the sun is set:
Well they have done their office, those bright hours,
The latest of whose train goes softly out
In the red west.
Bryant—An Evening Reverie.
Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till—’tis gone—and all is gray.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto IV. St. 29.
’Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil,
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
Of one whose hate is mask’d but to assail.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto II. St. 49.
How lovely are the portals of the night,
When stars come out to watch the daylight die.
Thomas Cole—Twilight. See Louis L. Noble’s Life and Works of Cole. Ch. XXXV.
Beauteous Night lay dead
Under the pall of twilight, and the love-star sickened and shrank.
George Eliot—Spanish Gypsy. Bk. II.
In the twilight of morning to climb to the top of the mountain,—
Thee to salute, kindly star, earliest herald of day,—
And to await, with impatience, the gaze of the ruler of heaven.—
Youthful delight, oh, how oft lur’st thou me out in the night.
Goethe—Venetian Epigrams.
Sweet shadows of twilight! how calm their repose,
While the dewdrops fall soft in the breast of the rose!
How blest to the toiler his hour of release
When the vesper is heard with its whisper of peace!
Holmes—Poems of the Class of ’29. Our Banker. St. 12.
The lengthening shadows wait
The first pale stars of twilight.
Holmes—Poems of the Class of ’29. Even Song. St. 6.
The gloaming comes, the day is spent,
The sun goes out of sight,
And painted is the occident
With purple sanguine bright.
Alexander Hume—Story of a Summer Day.
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.
Longfellow—A Summer Day by the Sea.
The twilight is sad and cloudy,
The wind blows wild and free,
And like the wings of sea-birds
Flash the white caps of the sea.
Longfellow—Twilight.
The west is broken into bars
Of orange, gold, and gray;
Gone is the sun, come are the stars,
And night infolds the day.
George MacDonald—Songs of the Summer Nights.
Dim eclipse, disastrous twilight.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 597.
From that high mount of God whence light and shade
Spring both, the face of brightest heaven had changed
To grateful twilight.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. V. L. 643.
Our lady of the twilight,
She hath such gentle hands,
So lovely are the gifts she brings
From out the sunset-lands,
So bountiful, so merciful,
So sweet of soul is she;
And over all the world she draws
Her cloak of charity.
Alfred Noyes—Our Lady of the Twilight.
***th’ 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.
Pope—Pastorals. Autumn. L. 98.
Night was drawing and closing her curtain up above the world, and down beneath it.
Richter—Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. Ch. II.
Twilight’s soft dews steal o’er the village-green,
With magic tints to harmonize the scene.
Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play,
And games and carols closed the busy day.
Sam’l Rogers—Pleasures of Memory. Pt. I. L. 1.
Twilight, a timid fawn, went glimmering by,
And Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast.
G. W. Russell—Refuge.
Her feet along the dewy hills
Are lighter than blown thistledown;
She bears the glamour of one star
Upon her violet crown.
Clinton Scollard—Dusk.
Then the nun-like twilight came, violet-vestured and still,
And the night’s first star outshone afar on the eve of Bunker Hill.
Clinton Scollard—On the Eve of Bunker Hill.
Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea,
The orange flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea.
Scott—Quentin Durward. Ch. IV.
The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team
Begins his golden progress in the east.
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 221.
Look, the gentle day
Before the wheels of Phœbus, round about
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 25.
The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And, by the bright track of his fiery car,
Gives signal of a goodly day to-morrow.
Richard III. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 19.
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
O’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;
Night followed, clad with stars.
Shelley—Alastor.
Now the soft hour
Of walking comes; for him who lonely loves
To seek the distant hills, and there converse
With Nature, there to harmonize his heart,
And in pathetic Song to breathe around
The harmony to others.
Thomson—Seasons. Summer. L. 1,378.
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,
Like twilight’s too her dusky hair.
Wordsworth—She was a Phantom of Delight.
As pensive evening deepens into night.
Wordsworth—To ———.