And for
its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green
flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the
greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are
inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a
cloud.
The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or fade
according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to foot, the
luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud permits, that their
own local colour and their own local season are lost and cease, effaced
before the all-important mood of the cloud.
The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is the
cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful
of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate
revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground
shine.
Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and
partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the mountain
slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out part of the
view by the rough method of standing in front of it.
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