Clouds .. O lovely clouds...

for ..... a nature lover.

Find me a man in the whole world who knows and loves the clouds more than I ! .
Show me anything that is more beautiful !
They represent the sprit of play,
the wrath of heaven and
the power of death;

They are a comfort to the eye,
a blessing and a gift of God,
as tender, yielding and gentle
as the souls of new-born children

They are as handsome, rich and prodigal as good angels;
as sombre, inescapable and merciless as messengers of death.

They sweep by in silvery wisps, sail along white, jocund masses lined with gold;
They hang poised, tinged with yellow, red and white.

Darkly and slowly they glide past like murderers; chase helter-skelter like mad horseman, linger sad and dreamily on the pale heights like melanchloly hermits.

THey assume the shapes of the blessed isles and of guardian angels, of threatening hands, fluttering sails cranes in flight.

They journey between God's heaven and our poor Earth, glorious images of all man's yearning , and belonging to both-dreams of the earth in which its blemished shoul cleaves to the pure heaven above.

O lovely restless flaoting clouds!
I was an ignorant child but I loved and contemplated them, little knowing that I too should go through life like a cloud, wandering, everywhere a stranger, floating between time and eternity.