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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!
--
Excelsior, st. 1 (1842)

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Some things were perfectly clear, seen with the vision of youth.
No doubts and nothing to fear, I claimed the corner on truth.
These days it's harder to say I know what I'm fighting for.
My faith is falling away.
I'm not that sure anymore.
Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know.
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.

 

Billy Joel

 

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

 

James Ryder Randall

 

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

 

James Joyce

 

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over.

 

Hugh Laurie

 

Humanity has a strange fondness for following processions. Get four men following a banner down the street, and, if that banner is inscribed with rhymes of pleasant optimism, in an hour, all the town will be afoot, ready to march to whatever tune the leaders care to play.

 

John Dos Passos