“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!”

“Gentlest and bravest in the battle-brunt—
The Champion of the Truth—
He bore his banner to the very front
Of our immortal youth.”

“In a herber green, asleep where I lay,
The birds sang sweet in the mids of the day;
I dreamed fast of mirth and play.
In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.”

“Night falls fast. Today is in the past.”

“The cold winds sweeping the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And ’mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press’d,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.”

“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.”

“Helmut Simon, who 13 years ago found the 5,000-year-old remains of a prehistoric man frozen in the ice of an Alpine glacier, has himself disappeared in the snow-covered Alps. Helmut, if you can hear me, don't give up. Help is on the way in five thousand years.”

“Took a walk and passed your house late last night,
All the shades were pulled and drawn way down tight.
From within, the dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade.”

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered… sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”

“Gothic script seemed to warp every letter that passed through the door of the funeral parlour, as if death were a German village.”