Embracing Light (Kings Canyon)

But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowèd roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim, religious light. -John Milton (1608-1674), Il Penseroso

Embracing Cloud (Kings Canyon)

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, And never wake to feel the day's disdain. -Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), Care-Charmer Sleep, Son of the Sable Night

Forms Revealed (Kings Canyon)

'Tis no sin love's fruit to steal, But the sweet theft to reveal: To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been. -Ben Johnson (1572-1637), Come, My Celia, Let Us Prove, from Volpone

Shroud (Kings Canyon)

But strength alone though of the Muses born Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn, Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchers Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs And thorns of life; forgetting the great end Of poesy, that it should be a friend To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man. -John Keats (1795-1821), Sleep and Poetry

Sorrow's Shroud (Yosemite)

And all that space my mirth adjourn So thou wouldst promise to return; And putting off thy ashy shroud At length disperse this sorrow's cloud. -Henry King (1592-1669), Exequy on His Wife

Silent Woods (Yosemite)

and wreathes of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone. -William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Beckon (Rainier)

Let us go in; the fog is rising. -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Attributed last words. A Certain World

Spring Mist (Princeton)

When April with its sweet showers Has pierced the drought of March to the root And bathed every plant-vein in such liquid As has the power to engender the flower; -Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400), The Canterbury Tales