THE SCENERY OF NIGHT 



March Skies 



To care greatly for variety and swift change in 

 the cloud groupings and glows of evening, for the 

 sounds, shades, and the feel of the early spring night, 

 is to set store by English weather. A tedium of 

 splendour sometimes marks the eve and night 

 pageantry of lands with more settled and gorgeous 

 seasons, the isles of Eden, in their " purple spheres 

 of sea." We may imagine such a thing even in 

 England during a long spell of dry summer weather, 

 but not in March. 



In March we can have full variety of evening 

 and night scenes, some flushing with delicate 

 colour and full of great natural music ; others 

 stark-black, and, save for the sound of the rain, 

 dead-still pure monochromes of night ; and yet 

 others that are weird even to a constant watcher of 

 wood and down drama after the close of day. One 

 evening in the week we are watching the two great 

 planets gemming a sky whose depth of blue, above 

 the sunset's influence, no thought could plumb. It 

 is a blue never seen in the clouds above or around 

 the setting sun ; cloud blue is, by comparison, 

 superficial ; there we can see pure azures sometimes, 

 or pure sea blues, untouched by green such as 

 Watts painted in his " Whither, Whence ? " but 

 nothing so grand or solid as this blue, in which 

 planets and Pleiades travel at seven o'clock on a 

 March evening. This is the beginning of one of 

 the serene, star-ruled nights of spring. 



