C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Sunset

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

Shakespeare.

The death-bed of a day, how beautiful.

Bailey.

Long on the wave reflected lustres play.

Sam’l Rogers.

The sacred lamp of day
Now dipt in western clouds his parting ray.

Falconer.

The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last.

Shakespeare.

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Shakespeare.

Cæsar-like the sun
Gathered his robes around him as he fell.

Alexander Smith.

The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And, by the bright track of his fiery car,
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.

Shakespeare.

Sunsets in themselves are generally superior to sunrises; but with the sunset we appreciate images drawn from departed peace and faded glory.

Hillard.

Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors
Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai.

Longfellow.

Oft did I wonder why the setting sun
Should look upon us with a blushing face:
Is’t not for shame of what he hath seen done,
Whilst in our hemisphere he ran his race?

Heath.

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows
In yonder West: the fair, frail palaces,
The fading Alps and archipelagoes,
And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.

T. B. Aldrich.

See the descending sun,
Scatt’ring his beams about him as he sinks,
And gilding heaven above, and seas beneath,
With paint no mortal pencil can express.

Hopkins.

Dipp’d in the hues of sunset, wreath’d in zones,
The clouds are resting on their mountain-thrones;
One peak alone exalts its glacier crest,
A golden paradise, above the rest;
Thither the day with lingering steps retires,
And in its own blue element expires.

James Montgomery.

’Tis sunset: to the firmament serene,
The Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene;
Broad in the cloudless west a belt of gold
Girds the blue hemisphere; above, unroll’d,
The keen clear air grows palpable to sight,
Imbodied in a flush of crimson light.

James Montgomery.

After a day of cloud and wind and rain
Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again,
And, touching all the darksome woods with light,
Smiles on the fields until they laugh and sing,
Then like a ruby from the horizon’s ring,
Drops down into the night.

Longfellow.

See! he sinks
Without a word; and his ensanguined bier
Is vacant in the west, while far and near
Behold! each coward shadow eastward shrinks,
Thou dost not strive, O sun, nor dost thou cry
Amid thy cloud-built streets.

Faber.

Now in his Palace of the West,
Sinking to slumber, the bright Day,
Like a tired monarch fann’d to rest,
’Mid the cool airs of Evening lay;
While round his couch’s golden rim
The gaudy clouds, like courtiers, crept—
Struggling each other’s light to dim,
And catch his last smile e’er he slept.

Moore.

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon
Like a magician extended his golden wand o’er the landscape;
Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest
Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.

Longfellow.

Purple, violet, gold and white,
Royal clouds are they;
Catching the spear-like rays in the west—
Lining therewith each downy nest,
At the close of Summer day.
Forming and breaking in the sky,
I fancy all shapes are there;
Temple, mountain, monument, spire;
Ships rigged out with sails of fire,
And blown by the evening air.

J. K. Hoyt.

Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God’s great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled:
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world.

Whittier.

Methought little space ’tween those hills intervened,
But nearer,—more lofty,—more shaggy they seemed,
The clouds o’er their summits they calmly did rest,
And hung on the ether’s invisible breast;
Than the vapours of earth they seemed purer, more bright,—
Oh! could they be clouds? ’Twas the necklace of night.

Ruskin.

Now the noon,
Wearied with sultry toil, declines and falls,
Into the mellow eve:—the west puts on
Her gorgeous beauties—palaces and halls,
And towers, all carv’d of the unstable cloud,
Welcome the calmly waning monarch—he
Sinks gently midst that glorious canopy
Down on his couch of rest—even like a proud
King of the earth—the ocean.

Bowring.

It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded
Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
Which then seems as if the whole earth is bounded,
Circling all nature, hush’d, and dim, and still,
With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded
On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill
Upon the other, and the rosy sky
With one star sparkling through it like an eye.

Byron.

How fine has the day been! how bright was the sun,
How lovely and joyful the course that he run!
Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun,
And there followed some droppings of rain:
But now the fair traveller’s come to the west,
His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best;
He paints the skies gay as he sings to his rest,
And foretells a bright rising again.

Watts.

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