In spite of this grateful breeze, I was glad to keep quiet in the middle of the day. How impressive is the hour of noon in the south! When the sun rides in triumphant power overhead, and showers his fervid rays upon the earth, and the sky has lost its deep blue, and is of a palpitating grey, towards the horizon quite warm and glowing; when the trees twinkle with innumerable stars of light, and distant rocky crags glitter through the purple bloom of distance; when cattle seek the shade, and the harvester puts aside his sickle, for ‘reapers ought to begin at the rising of the crested lark, and to cease when it goes to rest; but to keep holiday during the heat.’ Insect life alone is quickened, and the air is all athrob with heat, and the loud incessant songs of the cicala.
Then it is that the mountains are most beautiful, though there is a fascination about them under all aspects, and whatever their mood.
At dawn; when the light of the rising sun touching them, breaks their massed shadows with a joyous greeting.
In the evening; when they blush and glow at his departure. Through the fresh clearness of a spring day; when robed in blue, they look majestically serene.
In a spring morning; when they are half veiled by rising mists which by-and-by will be gently driven in flocks of clouds across the azure meads of heaven.
During the calm mellow afternoon; when the contented land basks in sunshine at their feet, and their summits are capped with fantastic battlements of cloud.
During the ominous lull preceding a sirocco, the air thick and yellow, when they become mysterious and ghostly, hooded with pallid white.
In the thunderstorm, when they are of deepest purple, to be engulfed in the black clouds, from which dart forked lightnings; for offended Jove
his glory shrouds
Involv’d in tempests, and a night of clouds,