In the twenty-ninth Sonnet we find this beautiful

application of it :

Haply I think on thee,-and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.

He paints it indeed in all its phases:

Look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Romeo and Juliet, 1. v.

Again, with more detail, in the same play :

The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path, and Titan's fiery wheels.

So in Hamlet, 1. i. :—

Idem, II. ii.

But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

The ghost adds another touch :

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.

So in the seventh Sonnet :

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, etc.

Now we have it reflected in water:

Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.
Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii.

So too in Sonnet thirty-three :

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

Now in its effect on the dew:

As is the morning's silver-melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun.

Now on trees, how it

Lucrece, 24-25.

Fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.

Richard II., II. ii.

How vivid is his picture of it breaking threateningly for storm in 1 Henry IV., v. i. :—

K. HENRY. How bloodily the sun begins to peer

PRINCE.

Above yon bosky hill! the day looks pale
At his distemperature.

The Southern wind

Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.

Of sunset he has given, I think, only one detailed description; it is in King John, v. iv. :

This night, whose black contagious breath
Already smokes above the burning crest
Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun.

Of the approach of night we have that magical

picture in eleven words:

Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood.

Macbeth, III. ii.

Cloudland he had also watched with interest. Where was it ever depicted more graphically than in Antony and Cleopatra (Iv. xiv.)?

ANT. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;

EROS.

A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,

A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,

A forked mountain or blue promontory,

With trees upon't, that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black Vesper's pageants.

Ay, my lord.

ANT. That which is now a horse, even with a thought

The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

As water is in water.

Fancy is no doubt mainly responsible for

As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white upturned wond'ring eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Romeo and Juliet, 11. ii.

How the starry heavens affected him is shown by the passage, which it is scarcely necessary to

quote:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Sit, Jessica look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patins of bright gold.

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