" [11]
But exquisitely lovely as is the blue arch of the midday sky, with its
inexhaustible variety of clouds, "there is yet a light which the eye
invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the light of the
declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like
watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon." [12] The evening colors
indeed soon fade away, but as night comes on,
"How glorious the firmament
With living sapphires! Hesperus that led
The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." [13]
We generally speak of a beautiful night when it is calm and clear, and the
stars shine brightly overhead; but how grand also are the wild ways of
Nature, how magnificent when the lightning flashes, "between gloom and
glory;" when
"From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder." [14]
In the words of Ossian--
"Ghosts ride in the tempest to-night;
Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind,
Their songs are of other worlds.
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