Glowworms

Glowworms are various different groups of insect larvae and adult larviform females that glow through bioluminescence. They may sometimes resemble worms, but all are insects, primarily flies and beetleis

Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glow-worm lights his gem; and through the dark,
A moving radiance twinkles.

Quotes

• Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
  The shooting stars attend thee;
  And the elves also,
  Whose little eyes glow
  Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
  • Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), "The Night Piece to Julia".

• Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer.
  Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer.
  Lead us lest too far we wander.
  Love's sweet voice is calling yonder.
  • Paul Lincke, "Das Glühwürmchen" ("The Glow-Worm"), aria from Lysistrata (1902); expanded and revised by Johnny Mercer in 1952 for the Mills Brothers.

• Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
  But look'd too near have neither heat nor light.
  • John Webster, The White Devil (1612), Act IV, scene 4.

• For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, Religion: A dialogue

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 314-15.

• Till glowworms light owl-watchmen's flight
  Through our green metropolis.
  • William Allingham, Greenwood Tree.

• My star, God's glowworm.
  • Robert Browning, Popularity.

• Tasteful illumination of the night,
  Bright scattered, twinkling star of spangled earth.
  • John Clare. To the Glowworm.

• While many a glowworm in the shade
  Lights up her love torch.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Nightingale.

• Glow-worms on the ground are moving,
  As if in the torch-dance circling.
  • Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, Donna Clara, Stanza 17.

• Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
  The nightingale does sit so late;
  And studying all the summer night,
  Her matchless songs does meditate.
  • Andrew Marvell, The Mower to the Glow-worm.

• Ye country comets, that portend
  No war nor princes' funeral
  Shining unto no other end
  Than to presage the grass's fall.
  • Andrew Marvell, The Mower to the Glow-worm.

• Here's a health to the glow-worm, Death's sober lamplighter.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Au Café, XXXIX.

• When evening closes Nature's eye,
  The glow-worm lights her little spark
  To captivate her favorite fly
  And tempt the rover through the dark.
  • James Montgomery, The Glow-worm.

• The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
  And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 5, line 89.

• Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew,
  Scattering unbeholden its aërial blue
  Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark.

• Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
  The glow-worm lights his gem; and through the dark,
  A moving radiance twinkles.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 1,682.

See also

• Fireflies