Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the
night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and
lake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about
the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than
dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of
midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver
channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes
away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green
pasture lie like Atlantis,[31] between the white paths of winding
rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader
among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above
them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten
their grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and you
shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating
up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet
masses, iridescent with the morning light,[32] upon the broad breasts
of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back
and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost
in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a
wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their
very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep
lake below.[33]... Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those
mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses
along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every
instant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows
athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will
see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapours,
which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey network, and
take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the
singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves, together; and then
you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and
lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders
of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a
place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging
by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.... And then you
will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those
watch-towers of vapour swept away from their foundations, and waving
curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the
burdened clouds in black bending fringes, or pacing in pale columns
along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And
then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant,
from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet
with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone,
now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away,
but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach
it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong
fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with
blood.... And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the
hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the
summit of the eastern hills, brighter--brighter yet, till the large
white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds,
step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her
kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable,
fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move
together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so
measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll
with them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet for
one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving
mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea,
are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the white
glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty
serpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitary
snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than
the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like
altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer
light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on
every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet
canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault
beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels:
and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are
bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
who has best delivered this His message unto men![34]
[30] Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from
this selection.
[31] A mythical island in the Atlantic.
[32] I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with
the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this
phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to
the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over
indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud.
The colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic
lustre upon them. [Ruskin.]
[33] Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.]
[34] The implication is that Turner has best delivered it.