Soft Deluge

From unassisted vision hid, the moons   To cheer remoter planets numerous pour'd,   By him in all their mingled tracts were seen.   He also fix'd the wandering Queen of Night,   Whether she wanes into a scanty orb,   Or, waxing broad, with her pale shadowy light,   In a soft deluge overflows the sky. -James Thomson, A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, 1727

Silver Lining

Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night? I did not err, there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted Grove. -John Milton, Comus, 1634

Soft Murmur

and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. -William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798

Ancient Track

O how I long to travel back And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train -Henry Vaughan, The Retreat

Silence Surged Softly Backward

Never the least stir made the listeners,     Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house     From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,     And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward,     When the plunging hoofs were gone. -Walter De La Mare, The Listeners

Upon a Slope

Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs Upon a slope above the village-school; -William Wordsworth, There Was a Boy, 1800

Falling Shadow

Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow. -T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925

Haunted Spring

From haunted spring and dale Edg'd with poplar pale The parting genius is with sighing sent. -John Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 1629

Melting Remembrance

Cold in the earth -- and fifteen wild Decembers From those brown hills have melted into spring. -Emily Brontë, Remembrance, 1846