Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”

The stars, which stand as thick as dewdrops on the fields of heaven. – Philip James Bailey

I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon. – Willa Sibert Cather