Bruce Wyman

“your faith is genuine, then you meet your responsibilities, fulfill your obligations, and wait until you are found. It will come. If not to you, then to your children, and if not to them, then to their children.” The lovely woman in a white dress with violet borders, in a room that gave out beautifully on gardens and the bridge, had become for Hardesty a personification of the city rising. And besides, city or no city, he loved her. Before she cried, he would be up the ladder, onto the roof, down the stairs, and at her door. As he left the top of the stable, the horses whinnied again. Clearing the parapet, he saw the city. From this perspective its lights were like summer fires on a grassy plain. Remember the soft air, he thought to himself as he crossed the roof. Remember the soft air and all the lights. The lights, never quite the same, always changing, were like distant spirits—those who were forever gone but not”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale