What is shed light on?

Famous quotes containing the words light on, shed and/or light:

    If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world’s inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
    Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
    And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
    Lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went
    Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
    And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
    Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

    Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
    Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)