The Poetry of Real Life A New Edition, Much Enlarged and Improved. By Henry Ellison |
 |
ON A FROSTY SUNSET. |
 |
|
 | The Poetry of Real Life |  |
ON A FROSTY SUNSET.
Ye gorgeous clouds, which on the setting sunAttend, how gloriously usefulness
And beauty, in your tints, combine, to dress
The heav'ns with robes so wonderfully spun,
That questioning Science, when she has undone
The dazzling tissue, finds it to possess
More charms, to her inquiring thoughtfulness,
Than all it had from dreaming Fancy won!
Those golden hues, to orange deepening,
Then into crimson melting slow away,
With no unmeaning pageant deck the day—
Their beauties from sublimest uses spring!
So Science wider scope gives to the wing
Of Poesy, and still extends her sway!
On a frosty sunset, the condensed vapors obstruct first of all the blue rays, allowing the yellow and red to pass, which produce a rich golden hue, deepening into orange; and, at last, when the quantity of condensed vapour is so great as to obstruct the yellow rays also, just when the sun is about to sink, then are produced those gorgeous red and crimson tints, which the eye of science and of uninstructed nature alike delight to dwell on, though the former derives a far higher gratification from the spectacle; in which it beholds one among the countless instances of the union of the Beautiful and Useful, in which the works of the Almighty abound. The red rays are the warmest as well as the strongest, and, when the vapors are condensed in frosty weather, at sunrise and sunset, are the first to reach the earth, and the last to forsake it: a beautiful and benevolent arrangement of Providence to temper the cold of winter.
| The Poetry of Real Life | |