Night Quotations: A Miscellany

Night is the time of night creatures: peepers to croakers, lightning bugs to the bugs that call kids back to school, owls all year. Night is the ballroom of constellations, Orion to Cygnus and back, the Dipper calling steps. What else happens, and where?

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush’s breast.

I turned on my small wireless set shortly after the nine o’clock news had started. There were a number of items about the fighting on the Russian front and on the British front in Libya, at the end of which some few sentences were spoken about an attack by the Japanese on American shipping in Hawaii, and also Japanese attacks on British vessels in the Dutch East Indies. There followed a statement that after the news Mr. Somebody would make a commentary, and that the Brains Trust programme would then begin, or something like this.

Saturday night there was always a dance at the yacht club. That was a very late crowd. The dances were supposed to stop at one, but if the stricter older members had gone home, the young people would keep the orchestra for another hour or two, and even after that they would hang around while one of the boys played the piano.

It was time to go home, time for a drink, time for love, time for supper, and he could see the lights on the hill -- lights by which children were being bathed, meat cooked, dishes washed -- shining in the rain. One by one, the cars picked up the heads of families, until there were only four left.

You don’t think, when you’re seventeen,
Of serious things at night in June.

All singing, in a minor mode,
Of love victorious and life,
They seem not to believe their happiness,
And their singing melts in the moonlight.

How the old folks would enjoy it,
They would sit all night and listen
As we sang in the evening, by the moonlight.

Well, since she put me down I’ve been out doin’ in my head.
I come in late at night and in the mornin’ I just lay in bed.

Around Nassau town we did roam.
Drinkin’ all night, got into a fight,
Well, I feel so broke up, I wanna go home.

Suddenly there broke from the silence of the night the most horrible cry to which I have ever listened. It swelled up louder and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all mingled in one dreadful shriek. They say that away down in the village, and even in the distant parsonage, that cry raised the sleepers from their beds.

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

The shocking Scenes which presented themselves in this Nights March are not to be described. The dead, the dying, the groans, lamentations and crys along the Road of the wounded (for those under the latter descriptions endeavoured from the first commencement of the action, or rather confusion to escape to the 2nd division) were enough to pierce a heart of adamant.

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Of course you saw there would be snow very soon. Every body must have seen the snow coming on. I admired your spirit; and I dare say we shall get home very well. Another hour or two’s snow can hardly make the roads impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I dare say we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.

I was now in Washington Street, and for the moment saw no living thing nor any light save that of the moon. From several directions in the distance, however, I could hear the sound of hoarse voices, of footsteps, and of a curious kind of pattering which did not sound quite like footsteps. Plainly I had no time to lose.

Beautiful summer night
gorgeous as the robes
Of Jesus

Autumn night
Salvation Army sign
On a cold brick building

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.