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Various

"The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862"


Just before sunset, from beneath a belt of clouds evanescing over the
summit, an inconceivably tender, brilliant glow of rosy violet mantled
downward, filling all the valley. Then the violet purpled richer and
richer, and darkened slowly to solemn blue, that blended with the gloom
of the pines and shadowy channelled gorges down the steep. The peak
was still in sunlight, and suddenly, half way down, a band of roseate
clouds, twining and changing like a choir of Bacchantes, soared around
the western edge and hung poised above the unillumined forests at the
mountain-base; light as air they came and went and faded away, ghostly,
after their work of momentary beauty was done. One slight maple,
prematurely ripened to crimson and heralding the pomp of autumn,
repeated the bright cloud-color amid the vivid verdure of a little
island, and its image wavering in the water sent the flame floating
nearly to our feet.
Such are the transcendent moments of Nature, unseen and disbelieved by
the untaught.


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