Twilight.

Chatham, Twilight in The Badlands, 1999

From the BBC series Words and Music ...

Twilight can gift us some of the most spectacular atmospheric displays, a riot of shifting colours that punctuate the end of a day, or announce the arrival of a new morning.

The palate and quality of shadowless light has inspired artists, composers and authors from time immemorial and can induce feelings of awe, but also serenity.

These dazzling displays are brought to us thanks to the conjunction of the Earth's orbital and atmospheric characteristics.

Twilight is the time, at the end of a day, between the sun setting below the local horizon and before the beginning of the night.

It is also the time between the end of the night and the sun rising above the local horizon, that marks the beginning of a new day.

From a meteorological perspective, twilight is further subdivided into three categories: Civil twilight, Nautical twilight and Astronomical twilight. These are based on how far the sun is beneath the horizon, with light and colour draining from the skies as night approaches.

CONNECT

Great.

Volkov, Twilight, n/d

TO a STAR SEEN at TWILIGHT

Hail solitary star!
That shinest from thy far blue height,
And overlookest Earth
And Heaven, companionless in light!
The rays around thy brow
Are an eternal wreath for thee;
Yet thou’rt not proud, like man,
Though thy broad mirror is the sea,
And thy calm home eternity!

Shine on, night-bosomed star!
And through its realms thy soul’s eye dart,
And count each age of light,
For their eternal wheel thou art.
Thou dost roll into the past days,
Years, and ages too,
And naught thy giant progress stays.

I love to gaze upon
Thy speaking face, thy calm, fair brow,
And feel my spirit dark
And deep, grow bright and pure as thou.
Like thee it stands alone:
Like thee its native home is night,
But there the likeness ends,—
It beams not with thy steady light.
Its upward path is high,
But not so high as thine—thou’rt far
Above the reach of clouds,
Of storms, of wreck, oh lofty star!
I would all men might look
Upon thy pure sublimity,
And in their bosoms drink
Thy lovliness and light like me;
For who in all the world
Could gaze upon thee thus, and feel
Aught in his nature base,
Or mean, or low, around him steal!

Shine on companionless
As now thou seem’st. Thou art the throne
Of thy own spirit, star!
And mighty things must be alone.
Alone the ocean heaves,
Or calms his bosom into sleep;
Alone each mountain stands
Upon its basis broad and deep;
Alone through heaven the comets sweep,
Those burning worlds which God has thrown
Upon the universe in wrath,
As if he hated them—their path
No stars, no suns may follow, none—
’T is great, ’t is great to be alone!

John Rollin Ridge

Silent.

Chatham, Twilight in the Badlands, 1999

EVENING

How tranquilly the evening’s darkening,

dusk deepening beneath the trees.

Consult the long alleyways of the skies

for the gift of this evening

and the cause of your ease.

But the waste! the pain and stress –

those reachings into secrets of the dark –

quarrying endlessness,

plummeting bottomlessness,

quizzing every question mark.

Why this rummaging into whence and why?

Empty let’s be. Open and free.

Let secrets come, or let them fly

away, diffuse like cloudscapes

or whisperings through a tree.

Eyes must glow as your spirits peer

through a wakeful cranny in where you are.

Only the silent have ears to hear.

When the doorstep feels the touch of a toe

only the vigilant’s door is ajar.

Aaro Hellaakoski