Commenting on some poems by Edwin Muir, Seamus Heaney says:
They return us, a little too unscathed, to the mote-lit stillness of the cradle and the chant-filled circle of the prayers.Â
Which he then concludes amounts to being returned to Eden.Â
I like that beam-shaft of motes as signifying cradle-safe stillness.Â
Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 249
He means lit-mote doesn’t he? But ‘mote-lit stillness’ is instinctively better than ‘lit-mote stillness.’
You’re quite right Adam, the motes aren’t the ones lighting up the stillness, but it sounds perfect anyhow, perhaps because we’ve all seen motes dancing in the light of a sunbeam. All best, Beatrice