Clouds

"I've also grown weary of reading about clouds in a book. Doesn't this piss you off? You're reading a nice story, and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds. Who cares? I'll bet you anything I can write a decent novel, with a good, entertaining story, and never once mention the clouds. Really! Every book you read, if there's an outdoor scene, an open window, or even a door slightly ajar, the writer has to say, "As Bo and Velma walked along the shore, the clouds hung ponderously on the horizon like steel-gray, loosely formed gorilla turds." I'm not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the fucking. The only story I know of where clouds were important was Noah's Ark."

"The clouds have thunderously poured down water; A sound the cloudy skies have given forth. Also, your own arrows proceeded to go here and there."

"Then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will beat themselves in grief, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory."

"I agree that clouds often look like other things — fish and unicorns and men on horseback — but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on."

"If you wish,"

"Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"

"There does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove."

"The low'ring element Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape."

"Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute."

"Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in shape of a camel? By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. Methinks it is like a weasel. It is backed like a weasel. Or, like a whale? Very like a whale."

"Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds."

"…feathery curtains, Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch."

"Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea."

"…fertile golden islands, Floating on a silver sea."

"Once I beheld a sun, a sun which gilt That sable cloud, and turned it all to gold."

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder."

"I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die."

"For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again."

"Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a Centaur, a Pard, or a Wolf, or a Bull?"

"Rocks, torrents, gulfs, and shapes of giant size And glitt'ring cliffs on cliffs, and fiery ramparts rise."

"I saw two clouds at morning Tinged by the rising sun, And in the dawn they floated on And mingled into one."

"Were I a cloud I'd gather My skirts up in the air, And fly I well know whither, And rest I well know where."

"O, it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend's fancy."

"Our fathers were under the cloud."

"Though outwardly a gloomy shroud, The inner half of every cloud Is bright and shining: I therefore turn my clouds about And always wear them inside out To show the lining."

"The clouds,—the only birds that never sleep."

"There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand."

"See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away Over the snowy peaks!"

"By unseen hands uplifted in the light Of sunset, yonder solitary cloud Floats, with its white apparel blown abroad, And wafted up to heaven."

"But here by the mill the castled clouds Mocked themselves in the dizzy water."

"So when the sun in bed, Curtain'd with cloudy red, Pillows his chin upon an orient wave."

"If woolly fleeces spread the heavenly way No rain, be sure, disturbs the summer's day."

"When clouds appear like rocks and towers, The earth's refreshed by frequent showers."

"Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven, Curtain round the vault of heaven."

"May I create plain fields by collecting clouds and bedeck them with arching rainbows."

"Who maketh the clouds his chariot."

"Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance, Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air, Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests, Seats of the gods in the limitless ether, Looming sublimely aloft and afar."

"Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire."

"The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."