There were therefore 150×60, that is, 9,000, separate clouds in this one rank, or about 50,000 in the field of sight. Flocks of Admetus under Apollo’s keeping. Who else could shepherd such? He by day, dog Sirius by night; or huntress Diana herself—her bright arrows driving away the clouds of prey that would ravage her fair flocks. We must leave fancies, however; these wonderful clouds need close looking at. I will try to draw one or two of them before they fade.
§ 6. On doing which we find, after all, they are not much more like sheep than Canis Major is like a dog. They resemble more some of our old friends, the pine branches, covered with snow. The three forming the uppermost figure, in the Plate opposite, are as like three of the fifty thousand as I could get them, complex enough in structure, even this single group. Busy workers they must be, that twine the braiding of them all to the horizon, and down beyond it.
And who are these workers? You have two questions here, both difficult. What separates these thousands of clouds each from the other, and each about equally from the other? How can they be drawn asunder, yet not allowed to part? Looped lace as it were, richest point—invisible threads fastening embroidered cloud to cloud—the “plighted clouds” of Milton,—creatures of the element—
| “That in the colors of the rainbow live And play in the plighted clouds.” |
Compare Geraldine dressing:—
| “Puts on her silken vestments white, And tricks her hair in lovely plight.” |
And Britomart’s—
| “Her well-plighted frock She low let fall, that flowed from her lanck side Down to her foot, with careless modesty.” |
And, secondly, what bends each of them into these flame-like curves, tender and various, as motions of a bird, hither and thither? Perhaps you may hardly see the curves well in the softly finished forms; here they are plainer in rude outline, Fig. 80.[1]