“So let me fly please lead me and I'll follow you
Above the clouds beyond the stormy sea
I long to share a world of sweet contentment there
In that bright land where grows the olive tree.”

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 264.

Spellbound (November 1837)

Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry (1853)
Context: Ascend with me above the dust, above the cloud, to the realms of the higher geometry, where the heavens are never clouded; where there is no impure vapour, and no delusive or imperfect observation, where the new truths are already arisen, while they are yet dimly dawning on the world below; where the earth is a little planet; where the sun has dwindled to a star; where all the stars are lost in the Milky Way to which they belong; where the Milky Way is seen floating through space like any other nebula; where the whole great girdle of nebulae has diminished to an atom and has become as readily and completely submissive to the pen of the geometer, and the slave of his formula, as the single drop, which falls from the clouds, instinct with all the forces of the material world.

On her thought process in “What I think: Yiyun Li” https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/12/10/what-i-think-yiyun-li (Princeton University; 2018 Dec 10)

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" (1953)

Source: A Memory of Light