What is the “triumphal arch”? What are the powers of the air? What is meant by saying they are “chained to the chair” of the cloud? Is the “triumphal arch” the “million-colored bow”? What is the “bow” that is said to be “million-colored”? What wove the soft colors of the million-colored bow? What is the “sphere fire”? What did it do? Whose soft colors did it weave? What was the earth doing while the colors were being woven? Why should the earth be laughing? Why is it spoken of as the moist earth?
Sixth Stanza. A cenotaph in an empty ornamental tomb. The body of the person to whom the monument has been erected is buried elsewhere.
In what way is a cloud the daughter of the earth and water? In what way is it the nurseling of the sky? How can a cloud pass through the pores of the ocean and shores? What are the pores of the ocean and shores? Is it true that a cloud cannot die? Is the poet true to nature and science when he says:
“For after the rain, when, with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the dome of the air”?
What is the “cenotaph” of the cloud? Out of what does the cloud rise again? What is there appropriate in saying that the cloud rises like a ghost? What is it the cloud builds up again?
Note the following particularly beautiful phrases:
“Leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.”
“Great pines groan aghast.”
“The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes.”