I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have putting them together. Clouds will probably always remain one of my favorite topics, so you can expect to see more pictures of them in the future.
Some good resources if you’d like to pursue this further are the following…
1. The Book of Clouds by John A. Day
2. Weather World, Photographing the Global Spectacle by Gordon Higgins.
3. Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains by Howard B. Bluestein
Some good websites that provide excellent information (and more specific details about clouds that I don’t give here) are…
ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/home.rxml
http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/
I’d like to end this series with two things. The first is a little slideshow I made (click here to see it). The second is one of my favorite poems by Shelley.
The Cloud
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 birds 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 sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ‘tis my pillow white
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightening, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits.
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills and the crags and the hills,
Over the lake and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack
While the morning star shines dead.
As, on the jag of a mountain crag
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
And eagle, alit, one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings;
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
In ardours of rest and love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depths of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest
As still as a brooding dive.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees
When I widen the rent in the wind-built tent
Till the calm rivers, lakes and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone
And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl:
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire and snow,
When the powers of air and chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
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 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 form the tomb,
I arise and upbuild it again.
Shelley
Happy Cloud-Watching!
P.S. Here’s a Storm Cloud of a different sort… now you know why I named my cat.
