Sunset, by E. E. Cummings

Great carnal mountains crouching in the cloud That marrieth the young earth with a ring, Yet still its thoughts builds heavenward, whence spring Wee villages of vapor, sunset-proud.— And to the meanest door hastes one pure-browed White-fingered star, a little, childish thing, The busy needle of her light to bring, And stitch, and stitch, upon the dead day’s shroud. Poises the sun upon his west, a spark Superlative,—and dives beneath the world; From the day’s fillets Night shakes out her locks; List! One pure trembling drop of cadence purled— “Summer!”—a meek thrush whispers to the dark. Hark! the cold ripple sneering on the rocks!

LETTERS, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word;
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Her favored remark was Things could be a helluva lot worse delivered with a TVcomic shrug.

The Inward Morning, by Henry David Thoreau

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
   Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion’s hourly change
    It all things else repairs.

In vain I look for change abroad,
    And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
    Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
    And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
    With its unchanging ray?

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
    Upon a winter’s morn,
Where’er his silent beams intrude
    The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
    The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
    The insect’s noonday hum,—

Till the new light with morning cheer
    From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
    For many stretching miles?

I’ve heard within my inmost soul
    Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
    Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
    When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
    Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,
    Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
    Which from afar he bears.