Clouds

The clouds are the playful fancies of a mighty sky

It is very delightful, sometimes to see a cloudless sky-a sky in which the sun shines brightly throughout the day. However there is no doubt that we shall grow tired and feel fed up if, day after day, there was nothing to vary the sameness of the sky, no cloud to give shape and variety. It would be as tedious as a journey through a desert, with its never-ending, never-changing miles of sand.

For most of the days of the year, we can see light, fleecy clouds,” mare’s tails”  as they are sometimes called or massive lumpy clouds hanging in the sky, like huge wool packs, or the bands of cloud that gather against the setting sun and disappear before the morning. The endless shapes and varying hues of clouds give us a sky wherein, the bard of Avon says,

Sometimes we see a cloud that is dragonish;

A vapour sometimes like a bear or lion,

A tower’d citadel, a pendent rock

A forked mountain or blue promontory,

With trees upon it that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air.

Children are nearly always interested in clouds. There are two very frequent questions which they ask. How high are the clouds in the sky? What keeps them up? The mare’s tails are the highest of them all, higher than Mt. Everest, and as high as the vulture flies.

Storm clouds are, as a rule, are one and a half miles above the sea level. Lowest of all are the cloud bands that are gilded with the sunset colours and look picturesque.

So if a cloud were to describe itself, how would it be? Perhaps as Shelley has composed….

I am the daughter of earth and water

And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the oceans 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 never a convex gleam

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.