Cloud: If I remember right,
It was the lovers needed shrouds that night!
It is an old, old tale. I heard it through
A Wind whose ancestor it was that blew
Ulysses’ ship across the purple sea
Back to his people and Penelope.
We Clouds pick up strange tales, as far and wide
And to and fro above the world we ride,
Across uncharted seas, upon the swell
Of viewless waves and tides invisible,
Freighted with friendly flood or forkèd flame,
Knowing not whither bound nor whence we came;
Now drifting lonely, now a company
Of pond’rous galleons—
Celeste: Oft-times I see
A Cloud, as by some playful fancy stirred,
Take likeness of a monstrous beast or bird
Or some fantastic fish, as though ’twere clay
Moulded by unseen hands.
Cloud: Then tell me, pray,
What I resemble now!
Celeste: I scarcely know.
But had you asked a little while ago,
I should have said a camel; then your hump
Dissolved, and you became a gosling plump,
Downy and white and warm—
Cloud: What! Warm, up here?
Ten thousand feet above the earth!
Celeste: Oh dear!
What am I thinking of! Of course I know
How cold it is. Pierre has told me so
A thousand times.
Cloud: And who is this Pierre
That tells you all the secrets of the air?
How came he to such frigid heights to soar?
Celeste: Pierre’s my—He is in the Flying Corps.
Cloud: Ah, now I understand! And he’s away?
Celeste: He left at dawn, where for he would not say,
Telling me only ’twas a bombing raid
Somewhere—My God! What’s that?