I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): Oft in the Stilly Night.

Spangling the wave with lights as vain

As pleasures in the vale of pain,

That dazzle as they fade.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lord of the Isles. Canto i. Stanza 23.

Small have continual plodders ever won

Save base authority from others' books.

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights

That give a name to every fixed star

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act i. Sc. 1.

Every room

Hath blazed with lights and bray'd with minstrelsy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Timon of Athens. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Thy steady temper, Portius,

Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Caesar,

In the calm lights of mild philosophy.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act i. Sc. 1.

Lights of the world, and stars of human race.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Progress of Error. Line 97.

The growing drama has outgrown such toys

Of simulated stature, face, and speech:

It also peradventure may outgrow

The simulation of the painted scene,

Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,

And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,

Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,

With all its grand orchestral silences

To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1809-1861): Aurora Leigh. Book v.

Take, O, take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn;

And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn:

But my kisses bring again, bring again;

Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Her face is like the milky way i' the sky,—

A meeting of gentle lights without a name.

Sir John Suckling (1609-1641): Brennoralt. Act iii.