Litharge

“ They felt that spring was theirs too, as it was—glory as fair as brief—with promise as a beginning and storm and desolation as an ending; like two trees that put forth green leaves in the sunshine, only later to have them torn and destroyed, and they themselves fall stricken by the storm to earth. ”

“ With shower and cloud and waterfall?
While yet the world's good heart is cheery,
Who knows if rains will ever brawl?
The storm thinks long, the winds wax weary,
Till winter comes to wind up all
From spring to fall. ”

“ An accident always caused a feeling of sullenness in the works; this was now intensified by the gloom of the weather and the increased discomfort of the conditions; the thick and acrid smoke that would not rise, the floating particles of grime that clogged one's breathing-passages, the chill dampness, worse than wind, worse than rain, that greeted the man who went sweating from his furnace to draw a breath of air. ”

“ We proceeded to lower the foresail and make it fast. The night was dark, greatly impeding our labor. Still, though not a star or the moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. ”

“ The sound of the rain blended with their splashing, and a long-drawn sigh seemed to be floating above the overturned skiff—the endless, labouring sigh of the earth, injured and exhausted by the eternal changes from the bright and warm summer to the cold misty and damp autumn. ”

“ Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the rain without—wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter world sodden with the sky’s incessant weeping.
She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her hair.
“He is out there in the sunshine,” she thought; “and I’m here in the dark and the rain alone. It is easy to forget when the sun shines always.” ”

“ These night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust your strength. ”

“ But the tempest rages on, and they can only wait, five minutes, ten minutes, looking, hoping, fearing, without thought of self and almost without thought of each other, till suddenly as it had come, the rain ceases and the wind, with one final wail of rage and defeat, rushes away into the west, leaving behind it a sudden silence which, to their terrified hearts, seems almost more dreadful to bear than the accumulated noises of the moment just gone. ”

“ To us, the storm being over, the wind is only chilly, bringing with it a dull sky, and the desire for exercise, but the invalids shrivel up in it like rose-leaves in a frost,—the hectic gives place to deadly pallor, and the purple hues that mark the orbit of the eye come out, stronger than ever. ”

“ With what a loud incessant noise the wind must be clamouring about on this fearful night, how the great elm swayed and cried in the storm, and the rain dashed and pattered on the windows, and dripped on the sodden earth from the shaking shrubs beside the door. ”

“ Then the light gradually died from the colored arches, to be repeated again in the wonderful cloud effects at sunset. The storm had been like the weeping of a little child, who smiles before its tears—and afterward. ”

“ The wind, too, was very warm, and it came in sudden gusts and died again, and she did not know which was sweeter, the deep warm silence when the wind died and the smell of the earth came up from the ploughed fields, or the windy fragrance of the gusts. But walking thus in the silences and in the sudden winds, she felt her body strong and full and young, and a great new longing seized her for the man. ”

“ Ever with beautiful pity, she watches, she weeps, and she wanes,
Blind as a flame on the hills of the Winter in hours appointed
For the life of the foam and the thunder—the strength of the imminent rains. ”

“ Just then the sun peeped out from a rift in the clouds. Strange what a remarkable difference even a fugitive glimpse of the sun may have on people, after the king of the day has refused to shine for forty-eight hours, while the rains persist in descending. ”

“ Deceiving; and men, horses, arms, fall in heaps, in confusion.
And see! Now the clouds, by an icy gale smitten, their burden
Discharge! Lo! the gusts of the whirlwind swirl fiercely about them;
The sky in convulsions, with swollen hail buffets them sorely. ”

“ And as the wind knocked the hanged men against each other, and they moved backwards and forwards, he thought to himself, "Thou shiverest below by the fire, but how those up above must freeze and suffer!" ”

“ I know of nothing more annoying than that nervous thrilling or trembling, which runs through the whole frame after the mind has been troubled; it seems to me like the bubbling and restless swell of the ocean after a storm—one mass of fretful and impatient water, knowing not how to compose itself. ”

“ So day by day they strove to be oblivious of one another and not heed the cloud that impended—a bald-headed, gray-eyed cloud which rumbled enigmatic thunder threats—and the time grew shorter before their month's reprieve, when Limes would be away. ”

“ A half hour passed away, during which the wind increased till it almost amounted to a gale. Spurts of rain dashed against the windows with a sharp crackling sound that suggested hail, while ever and anon a distant roll as of rousing thunder, rumbled away among the hills in a long and reverberating peal, that made me feel glad to be housed even under the roof of these rude and uncongenial creatures. ”

“ In the morning, perhaps, we behold the waves charged with the wild power of the storm, dark and threatening, and the evening sun of the same day finds the flood lulled to rest, calmly reflecting the intelligent labors of man, and the sublime works of the Almighty, as though in conscious repose. ”

“ There has been rain in the night—heavy rain—and the earth looks soaked and brown and desolate. Great storms, too, had arisen, and scattered the unoffending leaves far and wide, until all the paths are strewn with rustling types of death. ”

“ Once, when the sky was young and the spirits were expressing their wishes, peals of light and thunder damaged the heavens until they were swollen and purple. Rain fell like leaves as the victors banished the fallen from the clouds. ”

“ I feel your arm supporting my neck, your cheek’s melancholy pressure. Shuddering we stand leaning against each other, like two pines of the forest, that for a short space a hurricane of storm wind has flung together only to separate them again. ”

“ To such a mood the poetic strain which breathes softly but sadly the universal despondencies of earth—generalizing its less weighty miseries into one vague plaint, sweet and always soft like the waves on the beach when the sea is calm, and only a reminiscence of past storm is- in the measured break and ripple — is beyond description welcome. ”

“ I feel just as you do, Mole; simply dead tired, though not body-tired. It's lucky we've got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn't it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one's bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds! ”

“ What's to be said of many another? I'm something, I'm the fog, as it were, here and there, floating around, sometimes coming like rain on dry ground. But the others? There's my son, the lightning that's nothing in itself, a flash of barrenness; he can act. ”

“ The wind at times would sigh and sob so mournfully, like a human voice, that her imagination peopled the darkness with strange creatures in distress, and then she would shudder as a more violent gust raised the prolonged wail into a loud shriek. ”

“ I fear a high wind, because storm demands that exertion of strength and use of action I always yield with pain; but the sullen down-fall, the thick snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, asks only resignation—the quiet abandonment of garments and person to be drenched. ”

“ As the Spirits continue their song, accompanying the watches of the night, the dawn approaches to the ear of mortal men calmly and gently, but to the sense of Spirits, the march of the hours is heard as a storm: the gigantic rock-gates of the East creak fearfully; Phœbus rolls his chariot wheels in thunder; and eye and ear are startled at the strong coming of the day. ”

“ It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary ”

“ Like frosty autumn gleams that scud
Tempestuous dusks and stormy dawns
Above the wind-dishevelled lawns.
With tired eyes and heart grown grave,
And thoughts more weary than the night,
I watch the dwindling of the light,
And hear the rising night-winds rave,
As one might hear, when half asleep,
Another self make moan and weep.
XLIX
Behold, the winds have speech and speak! ”

“ All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of iron.
Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze of a dust storm. ”

“ In fact, they all of them felt like those whom the ominous silence and repose of surrounding nature—a portentous calm and gloom overhead—fill with trembling apprehension of the coming storm. Their fears are quickened by the occasional falling of large spreading drops of rain through the sultry sky, not a breath of air stirring. ”

“ I have known fearful ravages to follow in their path--seen many a goodly tree go down. After every storm, though the sky may be clearer, the earth upon which it fell has suffered some loss which is a loss for ever. ”

“ The dull sounding קול serves not merely to denote the thunder of the storm, but even the thunder of the earthquake, the roar of the tempest, and in general, every low, dull, rumbling sound, by which God makes Himself audible to the world, and more especially from the wrathful side of His doxa. ”

“ The sleet-and-hail squalls following the lightning at the end of a westerly gale are cold and benumbing and stinging and cruel enough. But the dry, Easterly weather, when it turns to wet, seems to rain poisoned showers upon your head. ”

“ VANISHING BUBBLES
Many unknown bubbles float and flow,
Many ripples dance by me
And melt away in sea.
I like to know, ah, whence they come or whither
go—
The rain drops and dies,
My thoughts play wild and vanish quick,
The red clouds melt in skies ”

“ As the darkness gathered, the fire, which fora while gleamed more brightly, sank to a dull red, fading and brightening at the falling and rising of the wind, but growing with every minute less responsive to that soft influence. ”

“ The drizzle had developed into a fine, driving rain that swept aslant upon the wings of a new-sprung breeze.
A great weight seemed to be crushing her: a vast, invisible hand relentlessly bearing her down to the earth. ”

“ For a moment chaos reigned. Some enormous clouds, like huge blots of ink, swept through a host of smaller ones, which were scattered and floated like shreds of rag which the wind tore to pieces and carried off thread by thread. ”

“ At one moment it bursts upon these icy fragments and buries them many feet beneath its wave, and the next, as the buoyancy of the depressed body struggles for reascendancy, the water rushes in foaming cataracts over the edges, while every individual mass, rocking and laboring in its bed, grinds against and contends with its opponent, until one is either split with the shock or upheaved upon the surface of the other. ”

“ No pleasant boughs are stirred:
No gentle sun, no quiet snow,
No English bee or bird.
The suns of springtime scorch the stone,
In summer, storm and rave
The winds that herald the cyclone,
The rains that lash the grave. ”

“ The storm comes, the waters rise, the winds howl, the hail and the rain 'sweep away the refuge of lies,' and the dwellers in these frail and foundationless houses are hurrying in wild confusion from one peak to another, before the steadily rising tide. ”

“ No use for any girl to tell herself that this was the wind howling—or the rain dejectedly descending on a tin roof—for no wind ever howled so precisely up and down scales with such sobbingly human and barnyard notes, and no rain was ever known to be so surprisingly vocal, nor so loud and threatening one moment and so tremulously broken and far away the next. ”

“ Nature, too, it seemed, was exhausted by that convulsion of the elements that had turned the evening into a clamorous hell of fire and riot, and now from very weariness she was weeping herself asleep. ”