EVERYTHING by John Muir. Every damned word.
>July 23. —Another midday cloudland, displaying power and beauty that one never wearies in beholding, but hopelessly unsketchable
and untellable. What can poor mortals say about clouds? While a description of their huge glowing domes and ridges, shadowy gulfs
and cañons, and feather-edged ravines is being tried, they vanish, leaving no visible ruins. Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains
are as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both alike are built up and die, and in God’s
calendar difference of duration is nothing. We can only dream about them in wondering, worshiping admiration, happier than we dare
tell even to friends who see farthest in sympathy, glad to know that not a crystal or vapor particle of them, hard or soft, is lost; that they
sink and vanish only to rise again and again in higher and higher beauty. As to our own work, duty, influence, etc., concerning which
so much fussy pother is made, it will not fail of its due effect, though, like a lichen on a stone, we keep silent.
Pure poetry.
