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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.