"Be near me when my light is low,When the blood creeps, and the nerves prickAnd tingle; and the heart is sick,And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frameIs racked with pangs that conquer trust;And Time, a maniac scattering dust,And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,And men the flies of latter spring,That lay their eggs, and sting and sting,And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,To point the term of human strife,And on the low dark verge of lifeThe twilight of eternal day."

from In Memoriam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill,going far ahead of the road I have begun.So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;it has its inner light, even from a distance aa

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,into something else, which, hardly sensing it,we already are; a gesture waves us on,answering our own wave…but what we feel is the wind in our faces."

A Walk, Rainer Maria Rilke

"Yet for all its coldness,there's a tenderness in winter too, making us coverwhat we can no longer bare."

from Next Month Snow, Carole Glasser Langille