Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Dylan Thomas,
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night





Consumed in Fire

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed
in fire at the end of six thousand years is true.

-William Blake,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793





Immortal Flame

  I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
      And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
      I change, but I cannot die.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
The Cloud, 1820





Crimson Whisper

        as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
    And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods
        Whisper in odorous heights of even.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson,
Milton (Alcaics), 1863





Lost Sunset

Faint elfin songs from out the past
    Of some lost sunset land

-William Wilfred Campbell,
The Blind Caravan, 1905





Reconciliation of Light and Darkness

But here, where light and darkness reconciled
Held earth between them as a weanling child
Between the balanced hands of death and birth,
Even as they held the new-born shape of earth
When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled,
Here hope might think to find what hope were worth.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne,
In the Bay, 1878





Sea of Fire

And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been
Dissolv'd into one lake of fire,

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Julian and Maddalo (excerpt), 1824





Remote Time

Another Athens shall arise,
    And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
    The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Hellas (Chorus from), 1822





Hour Dividing Light from Darkness

If yet thy fire have not one spark the less,
O Titan, born of her a Titaness,
Across the sunrise and the sunset's mark
Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark,
To change this face of our unworthiness,
Across this hour dividing light from dark.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne,
In the Bay, 1878





Ruling Passion

Find, if you can, in what you cannot change.
Search then the Ruling Passion.

--Alexander Pope,
Epistles to Several Persons, 1734





Living Fire

Like sunrise never wholly risen, nor yet
Quenched; or like sunset never wholly set,
A light to lighten as from living eyes
The cold unlit close lids of one that lies
Dead, or a ray returned from death's far skies
To fire us living lest our lives forget.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne,
In the Bay, 1878





Passion Above the Bay

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;

-Robert Browning,
Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, 1845





Fiery Sphere

To change this face of our chill time, that hears
No song like thine of all that crowd its ears,
Of all its lights that lighten all day long
Sees none like thy most fleet and fiery sphere's
Outlightening Sirius--in its twilight throng
  No thunder and no sunrise like thy song.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne,
In the Bay, 1878





From Cape to Cape

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
      Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
      The mountains its columns be.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
The Cloud, 1820





A Faint Note

I seem to hear a bar of music float
And swoon into the west ;
My ear can scarcely catch the whispered note,
But something in my breast
Blends with that strain, till both accord in one,
As cloud and colour blend at set of sun.

-Emily Pauline Johnson,
Flint and Feather, 1912





Tonight

TO-NIGHT the west o'er-brims with warmest dyes ;
Its chalice overflows
With pools of purple colouring the skies,
Aflood with gold and rose ;
And some hot soul seems throbbing close to mine,
As sinks the sun within that world of wine.

-Emily Pauline Johnson,
Flint and Feather, 1912





When Sunset May Breathe

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
      Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
      From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
      As still as a brooding dove.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
The Cloud, 1820







more pictures from the bay




images © 1998 by Randy Wang
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