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| Photo courtesy of Ellen McLaughlin |
Ordinarily
to look at the sky
for any length of time is impossible. Pedestrians would be impeded and disconcerted
by a public sky-gazer. What snatches we get of it are mutilated by
chimneys and churches, serve as a background for man, signify wet weather or
fine, daub windows gold, and, filling in the branches, complete the pathos of
dishevelled autumnal plane trees in London squares. Now, become as the leaf or
the daisy, lying recumbent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered to be
something so different from this that really it is a little shocking. This then
has been going on all the time without our knowing it!—this incessant making up
of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, and drawing
vast trains of ships and waggons from North to South, this incessant ringing up
and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold
shafts and blue shadows, with veiling the sun and unveiling it, with making
rock ramparts and wafting them away.
“On Being
Ill” (E5 198-99)
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