The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
Oh, the summer night, Has a smile of light, And she sits on a sapphire throne.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance.
If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear.
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
I know a place where the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.
Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, When a hazard has made them one. Arc upon arc, from shade to shine, The World went thundering free; And what was his errand but hers and mine - The lords of him, I and she? O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one.
Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night! Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars! Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!
O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one." (Between the Dusk of a Summer Night, 13-16)
Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night.
It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.
or simply:
