TIIE BLUE SKY 
flame shot through, earth reflection shot back, 
cloud light scattered between, all make their 
momentary impression; and even at night, 
though the splendor is diminished, it is not 
extinguished. The moon lends a pallor to the 
blue, the Milky Way stretches its nebulous 
scarf across it, the Belt of Orion blazes out 
from it, the planets gleam on its dark ground, 
and through the long dusk of night the shift- 
ing splendor falls, the eternal round of beauty 
moves on. 
And by day or by night, seen from mountains 
or from valleys, what infinite tenderness in the 
blue! Was ever depth and transparency of 
color so beautifully revealed, and by such subtle, 
elusive means? Drifts upon drifts of air super- 
imposed one upon another, rings upon rings 
of illuminated atmosphere, rising higher and 
higher, and all of them deepening the tone, but 
never clouding its transparency. How far we 
seem to see into that blue, but there is no place 
where the eye reaches a background—no place 
where a basic color appears. It is always a 
spectral abyss—a blue dream resting above us, 
which the mind of the human has never been 
able to grasp as a reality. 
It is not to be wondered at that the tender- 
Shifting 
splendor. 
Tenderness 
of the blue. 
