gaze, the expression began to change; he had the exact air of
closing one eye, dropping his jaw, and drawing down his nose;
had the thing not been so imposing, I could have smiled; and
then almost in a moment, a shoulder of leaden-coloured bank
drove in front and blotted it. My attention spread to the
rest of the cloud, and it was a thing to worship. It rose
from the horizon, and its top was within thirty degrees of
the zenith; the lower parts were like a glacier in shadow,
varying from dark indigo to a clouded white in exquisite
gradations. The sky behind, so far as I could see, was all
of a blue already enriched and darkened by the night, for the
hill had what lingered of the sunset. But the top of my
Titanic cloud flamed in broad sunlight, with the most
excellent softness and brightness of fire and jewels,
enlightening all the world. It must have been far higher
than Mount Everest, and its glory, as I gazed up at it out of
the night, was beyond wonder. Close by rode the little
crescent moon; and right over its western horn, a great
planet of about equal lustre with itself. The dark woods
below were shrill with that noisy business of the birds'
evening worship. When I returned, after eight, the moon was
near down; she seemed little brighter than before, but now
that the cloud no longer played its part of a nocturnal sun,
we could see that sight, so rare with us at home that it was
counted a portent, so customary in the tropics, of the dark
sphere with its little gilt band upon the belly. The planet
had been setting faster, and was now below the crescent.
They were still of an equal brightness.

I could not resist trying to reproduce this in words, as a