109
" As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose color, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there. "
― Willa Cather , My Ántonia (Great Plains Trilogy, #3)
112
" Se fosse ancora vivo, tornerei da lui a chiedergli perdono; perché so cosa significa essere vecchi e soli e amareggiati. Sì, cara, perché più invecchiamo, più finiamo col somigliare ai nostri antenati. Ogni giorno che passa, la sua ferocia cresce dentro di me. Da giovani crediamo di essere tanto speciali, siamo convinti che nessuno possa capirci; ma la natura ce l'abbiamo nel sangue, e resta sempre qui, in attesa, come il nostro scheletro. "
― Willa Cather , My Mortal Enemy
114
" Under the bluffs that overhung the marsh he came upon thickets of wild roses, with flaming buds, just beginning to open. Where they had opened, their petals were stained with that burning rose-colour which is always gone by noon, -- a dye made of sunlight and morning and moisture, so intense that it cannot possibly last. . . must fade, like ecstasy. Niel took out his knife and began to cut the stiff stems, crowded with red thorns.
He would make a bouquet for a lovely lady; a bouquet gathered off the cheeks of the morning. . . these roses, only half awake, in the defencelessness of utter beauty. "
― Willa Cather , A Lost Lady
119
" By the time they had called at the baker's and climbed to the top of Cap Diamant, the sun, dropping with incredible quickness, had already disappeared. They sat down in the blue twilight to eat their bread and await the turbid afterglow which is peculiar to Quebec in autumn; the slow, rich, prolonged flowing-back of crimson across the sky, after the sun has sunk behind the dark ridges of the west. Because of the haze in the air the colour seems thick, like a heavy liquid, welling up wave after wave, a substance that throbs, rather than a light. "
― Willa Cather , Shadows on the Rock