“I thought that the light-house looked lovely as hope,That star on life's tremulous ocean.”

“DOST thou not hear the silver bell,Through yonder lime-trees ringing?'Tis my lady's light gazelle.To me her love thoughts bringing, —All the while that silver bellAround his dark neck ringing.”

“There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream. ”

“I feel like oneWho treads aloneSome banquet-hall deserted,Whose lights are fled,Whose garland's dead,And all but he departed!”

“Disappointments in love, even betrayals and losses, serve the soul at the very moment they seem in life to be tragedies. The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity. We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life.”

“Besides, the story is ambivalent and mysterious in its ending. Is this Alkestis returning from down below? Why does she have a veil over her face? Could it be that when we forcefully bring back to life what has been lost through love what we get is only a shate of its former reality? Maybe we can never succeed fully in restoring the soul to life. Maybe she will always be veiled and at least partially shielded from the rigors of actual life. Love demands a submission that is total.”

“When you sense that your dark night is one of pregnancy and oceanic return, you could react accordingly and be still. Watch and wonder. Take the human embryo as your model. Assume the fetal position, emotionally and intellectually. Be silent. Float in your darkness as if it were the waters of the womb, and give up trying to fight your way out or make sense of it.”