It has that delicate, transparent
blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or larger
white ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the great
concave. All through the earlier day (say from 7 to 11) it keeps a
pure, yet vivid blue. But as noon approaches the color gets lighter,
quite gray for two or three hours--then still paler for a spell, till
sun-down--which last I watch dazzling through the interstices of a
knoll of big trees--darts of fire and a gorgeous show of light-yellow,
liver-color and red, with a vast silver glaze askant on the water--the
transparent shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all the
paintings ever made.
I don't know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing to these
skies, (every now and then I think, while I have of course seen them
every day of my life, I never really saw the skies before,) have had
this autumn some wondrously contented hours--may I not say perfectly
happy ones? As I have read, Byron just before his death told a friend
that he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence.
Then there is the old German legend of the king's bell, to the same
point. While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful sunset
through the trees, I thought of Byron's and the bell story, and the
notion started in me that I was having a happy hour. (Though perhaps
my best moments I never jot down; when they come I cannot afford to
break the charm by inditing memoranda. I just abandon myself to the
mood, and let it float on, carrying me in its placid extasy.
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