“Of late the nights
are dawning
plum-blossom white.”

“The blossom is out in full now, it’s plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white. It’s the whitest, frothiest blossomest blossom that ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the now-ness of everything is absolutely wondrous.”

“The white May blossom swooned slowly into the open mouth of the grave.”

“The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness”

“There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.”

“I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.”

“Ah! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave!”

“Night's darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.”

“You have come from my home,
So you must know about things at home.
On the day you left—in front of my open-work window,
Had the winter plum opened into blossom yet?”

“When the force of desire for the Truth blossoms, selfish desires wither away, just like darkness vanishes before the radiance of the light of dawn.”