This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days,the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.

Western Attitudes Toward Death.

I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him, ... This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.

I saw Byzantium in a dream, and knew that I would die there. That vast city seemed to me a living thing: a great golden lion... I felt the dread jaws close on me as I stood screaming.

Then I awoke; but my waking brought neither joy nor relief. For I rose not to life, but to the terrible certainty of death. I was to die, and the golden towers of Byzantium would be my tomb. ~ Aidan

... daylight crept through the trees like an army of crafty boys.

There will come a time of fire and night, when enemies rise and empires fall, when the suns themselves begin to die.