Soleure

“ The fresh, crisp air of early morning; the peace which sinks like a benediction upon the wearied earth when the scorching sun has fallen from the sky, and the sand gives off its heat in rapid radiation; the sense of immensity made manifest in the wide, wide plains by day, and in the almost supernaturally bright skies at night ”

“ For those to whom the sky on a star-lit night provides an hour's ecstacy a hole or two in the roof is a blessing, but to the common mortal is a damnation by which the winter wind tints the nose o' nights a soft shade of deep purple or gives passage to a gentle flow of rain that forms lakes and pools on your overcoat and blanket and which at the slightest movement runs like a small river down your chest until you wake with a shivering gasp. ”

“ I stood in the waist on the weather side, watching the gradual breaking of the day, and the first streaks of the early light. Much has been said of the sunrise at sea; but it will not compare with the sunrise on shore. It wants the accompaniments of the songs of birds, the awakening hum of men, and the glancing of the first beams upon trees, hills, spires, and house-tops, to give it life and spirit. ”

“ When the sun rises in splendour above the eastern horizon, tinting the sky with varied colours, lighting up the clouds which till then have been but dark patches on the heavens, bringing out the colours of hill and dale, rock and river, fields and woods, the heart gladdens at the spectacle. A pleasing melancholy falls on us as the light fades away at eventide, tint after tint vanishing, until at length the gloom of night enshrouds all. ”

“ The sunshine and the shadow lengthen with the dying day,
And, like a dream, the daylight vanishes from earth away.
The western sky is covered with a web of beauty spun
By fairy hands, and woven from the life-tide of the sun. ”

“ The blue sky overhead flecked with the lightest of summer clouds, the buoyant air, the sun-steeped landscape, the general brightness and cheerfulness of the day, impressed us with an indefinable but very real joyousness and light-heartedness. ”

“ The sun, low in the sky,—for the hour was early,—cast its slant rays athwart the prospect, giving to each nearer bank and hillock, and to the more distant protuberances on the mountain-sides, those well-defined accompaniments of shadow that serve by throwing the minor features of a landscape upon the eye in bold relief, to impart to it an air of higher finish and more careful filling up than it ever bears under a more vertical light. ”

“ It is a summer evening; the sky is packed with loose clouds; the sun’s rays, pouring through an archway left between two grey masses, merely touch the mountain-tops and are reflected down into the hollow glen about us. ”

“ A tinted fringe of cloud appears on the mists high up, and gives the impression of a beam of sunlight amidst the shadows. But no sun has broken the eastern sky-line, nor will it for another half-hour. ”

“ This morning sky, after the night's tempest, is a pure and dazzling blue. The air—the delicious air!—is full of sweet resinous odors, shed from the countless pine-boughs broken and strewn by the gale. ”

“ Then all at once summer returned, coming like a thief in the night, for when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power in a sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea with no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as of one that sleeps. ”

“ Everything that had budded had a world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling, self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and vigorous sky. ”

“ Rarely did the dull gray of the sky dim the glory of a whole day, and the short summer showers, freshening the beauty of the landscape and abating the fervid heat of mid-summer, seemed only too infrequent. And above all, the pure, free, upland air, that gives vigor and health to the body, joy and lightness to the heart, almost annihilates distance to the eye; and in breathing which, one drinks into the lungs the very wine of life. ”

“ The sky arches wide over all, giving room to multitudes of stars by night and long processions of clouds blown from the sea, but also, in the childish memory where these pictures live, to deeps of celestial blue in the endless days of summer. ”

“ Even the sky, beautiful as it is, has the look of that one sometimes sees in a very bright moonlight night—deeply, intensely blue, with white fleecy clouds driven vigorously along by a strong breeze, now veiling and now exposing the dazzling luminary around whom they sail. ”

“ These are only little summer showers, that make the earth greener and the flowers more beautiful. The sky is of a more heavenly azure when they pass away, and the sun shines more gloriously than before. ”

“ The beauty of the night in such a climate, and at that season, is well-nigh unimaginable. The vault of heaven literally quivers with stars like an ocean with waves of light, so full does infinite space appear of twinkling tremulous luminaries. ”

“ The sun is like the star spangled banner—as it is "still there." You get up to-morrow morning just before sunrise and look away toward the east, and keep on looking in that direction, and at last you will, see a fine sight, if what I have been told is true. If the sunrise is as grand as the sunset, it indeed must be one of nature's most sublime phenomena. ”

“ Except in late autumn and early spring, you are living under almost cloudless skies, in an atmosphere steeped in sunshine, spicy with the healing resin of the pines and hemlocks and spruce, that not only scent the air but literally permeate it with the essences of their own life. You are living far above the vapors of sea level, in a region luminous of light. ”

“ But, oh! the night---the cool, luxurious night,
Which closes round us when the day grows dim,
And the sun sinks from his meridian height,
Behind the ocean's occidental rim!
Clouds, in thin streaks of purple, green and red,
Gather around his setting, and absorb
The last rich rays of glory, that are shed,
In wide profusion, from his failing orb. ”

“ The sky seems more genial than the earth. It beams upon it with a tearful smile; it constitutes all the movement, the grace, the exquisite charm of this delicate tranquil landscape. Then when winter comes the sky merges with the earth in a kind of chaos. Fogs come down thick and clinging. ”

“ Let clouds rest on the hills, spirits fly, and travellers fear. Let the winds of the woods arise, the sounding storms descend. Roar streams, and windows flap, and green-winged meteors fly! Let the pale moon, from behind the hills, enclose her head in clouds! Night is alike to me, blue, stormy, or gloomy the sky. Night flies before the beam when it is poured on the hill. ”

“ The sky has been wonderful, with every form of cloud in every condition of light and shade; the sun has continually appeared through breaks in the cloudy heavens from time to time, brilliantly illuminating some field of pack, some steep-walled berg, or some patch of bluest sea. ”

“ Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuse me—trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost—the one I am looking at most to-day is the sky. It has that delicate, transparent blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or larger white ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the great concave. ”

“ These drifts, as of snow, are ranges of mountains, and the promontories and pendent stars are crags and mountaintops just catching the rays of dawn. Down their steep sides lie the shadows of night; the topmost peaks alone have caught the glory! And beyond is the night-side of the moon, illumined by dim earthlight. ”

“ One is sunrise, when there is first a grayness in the east, and then the clouds begin to redden, and afterwards a joyful brightness heralds the appearing of the sun as he drives in rout the reluctant rearguard of the night. ”

“ The sky in summer is clear and of a beautiful azure, without cloud, and with very little rain; moderate dews descend after sunset As the autumn approaches, the weather becomes less serene; the sky is occasionally darkened with clouds, and lightning and thunder with heavy showers occur. ”

“ But although I have seen beautiful effects at all times of the day, those that I remember more than any others are the early mornings, when the sun was still low in the heavens, when, standing on that fine stretch of yellow sand, one seemed to breathe an atmosphere so pure, and to gaze at a sky so transparent, that some of those undefined longings for surroundings that have never been realized were instinctively uppermost in the mind. ”

“ Then as the spring drew near, if, indeed, such a word as spring be at all applicable to an abode of utter dreariness, a faint twilight would be just discernible. The illuminated portion of the sky would move round and round the horizon each twenty-four hours, gradually becoming more and more conspicuous, until at last the edge of the sun appeared. ”

“ Do not the calmest and brightest days of autumn show clouds, that drift their ragged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift with their weight of vapors, until the sun's whole surface is shrouded; and you can see no shadow of tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater and gulping shadow of the cloud? ”

“ Such a day, in this sad season of the year, when the glory of the woods is rapidly departing, and from the swollen streams and dewy pastures the vapours ascend in a dense whirl of clouds, is of frequent occurrence; and on such a day, the solar sphere, as it struggles through the screening mists, seems like the face of the moon at its full, when slightly veiled. ”

“ The difference in the apparent sunset is about half-an-hour between winter and summer. Bright as the sky is by day, it is brighter far by night, when the spangled heavens are spread out like a curtain. ”

“ The skies are intensely blue, the sunshine glorious;{210} a golden haze, born of the sun’s intensity and the green earth’s responsive gladness, falls like a shining veil everywhere. Surrounded by such scenes at such a season, one is apt to fall into a contemplative mood. ”

“ As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the wood and hedges—green waves and billows—became full of fine atoms of summer. ”

“ It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunset,—the evening star following with silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air, with a fancy that kindles and soars into the heavens before him,—there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening shadows. ”

“ The influences of heaven falling on the sheeted waters, they rise at their bidding and float in air, making the skies more beautiful or more sublime, according to the spirit of the hour. Whether the clouds float over the earth, illumined by sun-rays, like the cars of loving angels ”

“ The winter's day has had its melancholy grey sky, with many a bitter dash of snow and rain—but it has stormed itself out, and at eventide, a rent in the clouds reveals the sun, and it closes in peaceful clearness of light. ”

“ Rising out of the horizon at six o’clock, the sun passed exactly through the zenith, and went down perpendicularly in the west into the boundless ocean. Who can wonder that this daily disappearance of the sun has had so large a share in the poetry and the religion of our race? In every land, under every climate, it is the one spectacle which is ever new and ever fascinating. ”

“ Towards evening I sat for an hour—and it is an indolent pleasure I often indulge in—observing the sky and the clouds, and watching their slow and sometimes almost imperceptible changes of shape and hue, and in comparing them with the sunset skies of our northern climes, which, if wanting something of the ethereal softness of this, are more glowing, more brilliant, and more decidedly beautiful. ”

“ In quiet uninteresting calm the days pass by, but at night nature rallies her forces and gives us some glorious sunsets, filling the pale skies with cloud islands of golden light, while white and crimson feathery plumes, like spectral palms, float hither and thither across the sea-green sky. ”

“ The sun was sinking to repose, and the whole landscape lay before them bathed in light, till a cloud passing overhead, darkened the heavens just immediately above them, and one of those beautiful sun showers, that rather characterize the spring than autumn, began to fall ”

“ Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow? Or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated? ”

“ The sun, as he unlocks the rosy gates of the east, and comes forth to run his glad journey across the sky, diffusing light and warmth upon the vegetable world beneath, moves with the utmost regularity, giving to each succeeding year, "the seasons and their changes." ”

“ The sun both at sunrise and at sunset glows with a light which is much more ruddy than the beams it dispenses at noonday. But at sunset or at sunrise the rays which reach our eyes have much more of our atmosphere to penetrate than they have at noon, and accordingly the atmosphere imparts to them that ruddy colour so characteristic and often so lovely. ”