“Nights and days came and passedAnd summer and winterand the rain.And it was good to be a little Island.A part of the worldand a world of its ownAll surrounded by the bright blue sea.”

“nights and days came and passedand summer and winterand the sun and the windand the rain.and it was good to be a little islanda part of the worldand a world of its ownall surrounded by the bright blue sea.”

“The French called this time of day 'l'heure bleue.' To the English it was 'the gloaming.' The very word 'gloaming' reverberates, echoes - the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour - carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you think the end of the day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice; the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone... Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.”

“My room was in one of those turrets and at night I could hear the sea and the faint rustle of eelgrass in the soft wind. The weather was perfect that summer. No storms. Blue skies and just the right amount of wind every day. The sailors were in heaven.”

“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'd give all the wealth that years have piled, the slow result of life's decay, To be once more a little child for one bright summer day.”