Against the night.

There is a moment in the dawn

when your soul returns from a voyage

with the spark of your own life 

and you awake full of new experience.

There is a moment in the glare of the day 

when bent upon the work at hand 

you suddenly see from the side of your eye

that you are at one with the whole universe.

There is a moment in the twilight 

when the first star appears in the sky

and you do not know how much earlier

you might have seen it had you looked.

In these moments are the dawn, and noon,

and serene sunset in ourselves.

Zphx 20160601

With apologies to HDT:

March 17, 1852 ("As if in sleep our individual fell into the infinite mind, and at the moment of awakening we. . . take up our bodies and become limited mind again. . .There is a moment in the dawn, . . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”); April 1, 1860 ("As if we only thought by sympathy with the universal mind, which thought while we were asleep. There is such a necessity to make a definite statement that our minds at length do it without our consciousness.”)

June 14, 1853.("Open to great impressions, ... you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before."); November 18 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); April 12, 1854 ("It is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); May 28, 1854 ("To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe.")

July 20, 1852 ("We see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier we might have seen it had we looked.")

July 3, 1840 ("We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves").

Against the night. See January 8, 1854 ("The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night")