quotations about morning
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Every morning is new as the last one, uncreased
as the not quite imaginable first.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Sky: An Assay"
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
In Our Time
Let me wake up next to you, have coffee in the morning and wander through the city with your hand in mine, and I'll be happy for the rest of my f***ed up little life.
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON
Empty Roads & Broken Bottles
Morn,
Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy hand
Unbarr'd the gates of light.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Of all the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Infinities
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night;
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam A.H.H.
The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of Dews.
JAMES THOMSON
"Summer", The Seasons
The morning is like a window, the day like a wall, the night like a mirror.
CHANG HSI-KUO
The City Trilogy
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.
JOYCE KILMER
"Alarm Clocks"
Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
EMILY DICKINSON
"Out of the Morning"
Dawn, thy opportunity is full! We, alas, know not the meaning of thy gorgeous page. Dazed we watch thy letters pale; cold embers, left upon the sky; Life's opportunity flickering into naught.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with Orient pearl.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
One may be alive in the morning,
Then dead at night,
Changing worlds in an instant,
We are like the spring frost,
Like the morning dew
Suddenly gone.
GUISHAN LINGYOU
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,
And glowing into day.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
I have always disliked the morning, it is too responsible a time, with the daylight demanding that it be 'faced' and (usually when I wake for I wake late) with the sun already up and in charge of the world, with little hope of anyone usurping or challenging its authority. A shot of light in the face of a poor waking human being and another slave limps wounded into the light-occupied territory.
JANET FRAME
Daughter Buffalo
I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!"
STEVE MARABOLI
Unapologetically You
Daylight is nobody's friend.
God comes in like a landlord
and flashes on his brassy lamp.
ANNE SEXTON
"You All Know the Story of the Other Woman"
Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Five Flights Up"