“I saw Eternity the other night,Like a great ring of pure and endless light,All calm, as it was bright,And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,Driven by the spheres,Like a vast shadow moved, in which the worldAnd all her train were hurled.”

“I saw Eternity the other nightLike a great Ring of pure and endless light.”

“Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms simple and calm and blessed which we saw once in a pure, clear light being pure ourselves.”

“That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.”

“A great ring of pure & endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heartAnd breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.The end of all is hinted in the start.When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;Around us life & death are torn apart,Yet a great ring of pure and endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heart.It lights the world to my delight.Infinity is present in each part.A loving smile contains all art.The motes of starlight spark & dart.A grain of sand holds power & might.Infinity is present in each part,And a great ring of pure and endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heart.”

“That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn’t so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.”