"In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost."
The Earthly Book of Hours
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Reading
Sources, editions & further inquiry
The works gathered here have shaped the hours. This list grows as the hours are filled — it is a record of what has been read into the clock, and a guide toward what might be read further. Where possible, links are given both to freely available texts and to recommended editions via Bookshop.org.
Void
Midnight · hours 0 to 3
"Darkness is not the absence of light; it is the presence of the night."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
Silence
Pre-dawn · hours 3 to 6
"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."
"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; the holy time is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration."
"Before the birds have begun, before the day has made any claim, the soul is most itself."
Chorus
Dawn · hours 6 to 9
"No man can be said to have lost the day who has watched the dawn and heard the chorus break the silence."
"Early in the morning, when the world is young, the sun coming up from behind the hills — that is the time to see all things new."
Transit
Morning · hours 9 to 12
"There was never any more inception than there is now, / Nor any more youth or age than there is now…"
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
Fulcrum
Noon · hours 12 to 15
"All really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home."
"It is not down on any map; true places never are."
"Nature is not a place to visit. It is home."
Doldrums
Afternoon · hours 15 to 18
"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."
"Time is the longest distance between two places."
Repast
Dusk · hours 18 to 21
"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature."
"Evening is the time when the heart is most open."
Denouement
Night · hours 21 to 24
"The bleak fields are asleep, / My heart alone wakes…"
"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars."
"…and the short necessary night is soon ended, and the sky blue again over all the secret places where nobody ever comes…"