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midnight quotes

  • At midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free.

    - Robert Browning
      Asolando, epilogue.

  • The seal is set.Now welcome, thou dread power! Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear; Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear That we become a part of what has been, And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza138.

  • Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Prufrock and Other Observations,'Rhapsody on a Windy Night'.

  • Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Prufrock and Other Observations,'La Figlia Che Piange'.

  • Holding hands at midnight 'Neath a starry sky, Nice work if you can get it, And you can get it if you try.

    - Ira originally Israel Gershowitz Gershwin
      'Nice Work IfYou Can Get It', song from the musical Damsel in Distress (music by George Gershwin).

  • The stroke of midnight ceases, And I lie down alone.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      More Poems, no.11.

  •    Their smiles, Wan as primroses gathered at midnight By chilly fingered spring.

    -John Keats
      Endymion, bk.4, l.969^71.

  • Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muse'  d rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza 6.

  • If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking inthestreet, Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Puck of Pook's Hill,'Smuggler's Song'.

  • It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old courthouse pacing up and down.

    - (Nicholas) Vachel Lindsay
      The Congo and Other Poems,'Abraham Lincoln Walks  At Midnight'.

  •    Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature's eye, rise, rise, again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but Ayear, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I'll leap up to my God!Who pulls me down? See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah, my Christ.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 5, sc.2.

  •    Hence loathe'  d Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 L'Allegro, opening lines.

  • Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do). See Bible121:16.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
      Not So Deep as AWell,'The Flaw in Paganism'.

  • It was manifest to me that there was something in the Roman Catholic religion which made the priests very dear to the people; for I doubt whether in any village in England, had such an accident happened to the rector, all the people would have roused themselves at midnight to wreak their vengeance on the assailant.

    - Anthony Trollope
      Argosy,'Father Giles of Ballymoy', May.

  • 'Tis midnight, falls the lamp-light dull and sickly On a pale and anxious crowd, Through the court, and round the judges thronging thickly, With prayers they dare not speak aloud Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the bar You can see them through the gloom In the pride of life and manhood's beauty, there they are Awaiting their death-doom.

    -Jane Francesca ne  e Elgee Wilde
    'The Brothers'.

  • I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'The Lake Isle of Innisfree', stanzas1^2. Collected in The Rose (1893).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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