“Despite the awfulness of what was happening, the backdrop was a scene of beauty: a clear sky, a bright moon, clearly visible stars, flat undisturbed water, and an immense liner blazing with pinholes of light.”

— Steve Turner

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 142

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Steve Turner 29

British writer 1949

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“The moon is still bright;
The lights below the hills are still on;
The sky is still full of stars
Hanging like dreams.”

Lin Huiyin (1904–1955) Chinese architect and writer

(zh-CN) 一样是月明，
一样是隔山灯火，
满天的星
只使人不见，
梦似的挂起。
"Do Not Throw Away" (《别丢掉》), translated by Michelle Yeh in A Chorus for Peace: A Global Anthology of Poetry by Women (University of Iowa Press, 2002), p. 41
Variant translation:
The moon is still so bright;
Beyond the hills the lamp sheds the same light.
The sky besprinkled with star on star,
But I do not know where you are.
It seems
You hang above like dreams.
Xu Yuanchong, Vanished Springs: The Life and Love of a Chinese Intellectual (Vantage Press, 1999), pp. 44–45

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round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory
when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm…
all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs
and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts
the boundless, bright air and all the stars shine clear
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Homér Iliad

VIII. 551–555 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
: As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
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Iliad (c. 750 BC)