AIR,WINDS,CLOUDS ,SUNLIGHT,SKY ETC

Air, Wind, Clouds
Fog, Sky, Light, Stars, Lightening, Heavens

"For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually.  For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value."
-  Claude Monet  

"O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
-  Percy Bysshe Shelley    

"Listen!  the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!"
-  Humbert Wolfe 

"The sky and the strong wind have moved the spirit inside me till I am carried away trembling with joy."
-  Uvavnuk   

"Brew me a cup for a winter's night.
For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;
Spice it with love and stir it with care,
And I'll toast our bright eyes,
my sweetheart fair."
-  Minna Thomas Antrim

"No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place."
-   Edna St. Vincent Millay  

"The leaves lay like hands upon the ground. 
When the wind rustles them, they applaud softly."
-  Laura E. Stevens    

"Every dewdrop and raindrop had a whole heaven within it."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"No cloud above, no earth below,
A universe of sky and snow."
-  John Greenleaf Whittier    

"We are the stars which sing,
We sing with our light;
We are the birds of fire,
We fly over the sky.
Our light is a voice:
We make a road
For the spirit to pass over."
-  Algonquin Song of the Stars   

"There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind."
-  Annie Dillard   

 Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow."
-  Helen Keller    

"There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them.  I have but to touch the wind to know these things."
-  Hal Borland  

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."
-   John Ruskin   

"Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   

"twisting inland,
the sea fog takes awhile
in the apple trees."
-  Michael McClintock   

"The wind shows us how close to the edge we are."
-  Joan Didion   

"The fog is rising."
-  Emily Dickinson's last words   

"Although the wind is very powerful and you can feel its presence, in and of itself it cannot be seen.   You know it is there by its effect on others.  The great trees, the grasses and waves on the sea bend with its force.  If you are aware of your surroundings, you know it is there long before you feel it.  So it is with the ineffable." 
-  Author Unknown  

"Zeus, the father of the
Olympic Gods, turned
mid-day into night, hiding the light
of the dazzling Sun;
and sore fear came upon men."
-  Archilochus (c680-c640 BC), Greek poet
    Refers to the total SOLAR ECLIPSE OF  6 April 648 BC.  

"Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads.
The wind is passing by."
-  Christina Rossetti 

"Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies."
-  Swedish proverb   

"We all like to congregate at boundary conditions. Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where bodies meet mind. Where space meets time.  We like to be on one side, and look at the other."
-  Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless  

"The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past.
Listen: you've heard everything."
-   Shinkichi Takahashi, Zen Poems of  China and Japan,
    Lucien Stryk, p. 125  

"No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe,
be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human."
-  Jack Nicholson  

"Rainbows apologize for angry skies."
-  Sylvia Voirol  

"The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist."
-   Rabindranath Tagore  

"Don't knock the weather, nine-tenths of the
people couldn't start a conversation if it
didn't change once in a while."
-  Kin Hubbard   

"But on the twenty-fifth of May, at sunset, a violent wind howled madly,
Battering and rending my plants;
Rain poured down, Pounding the vines and flowers into the earth.
It was so painful
But as the work of the wind, I have to let it be ..."-RYOKAN 

"The shell must break before the bird can fly."
-  Alfred Tennyson  

"The inner - what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds
and deep with
the winds of homecoming."
-  Rainer Marie Rilke  

Wind is the loving
Wooer of waters;
Wind blends together
Billows all-foaming.
Spirit of man,
Thou art like unto water!
Fortune of man,
Thou art like unto wind!
-  Goethe, 1789  

"What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and
perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba
City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?"
-   Edward Abbey  

"Through woods and mountain passes
The winds, like anthems, roll."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Midnight Mass for the Dying Year, 1839.  

"You know the Zen question, 'The Bodhisattva of Great Mercy [Avalokitesvara,
or Kannon] has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes; which is the true eye?'  I
could not understand this for a long time.  But the other day, when I looked at the
pine trees bending before the cold blasts from the mountain, I suddenly realized
the meaning.  You see, all the boughs, branches, twigs, and leaves simultaneously
bend to the wind with tremendous vigor."
-  Two Zen Classics, Translated by Katsuki Sekida, Case 37, Joshu's Oak Tree  

"When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.
When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world.
The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless.
We say "inner world" or "outer world" but actually,
There is just one whole world."
-  Shunryu Suzuki  

"To garden is to open your heart to the sky.
The grandest view from the garden is the open sky. 
To garden in the rain: irresistible fragrances and fresh air."
-  Michael P. Garofalo, PULLING ONIONS 

"We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down,
The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall,
The elm tear up at the root and topple like a crown,
The pine crack at the base - we had to watch them all.
The ash, the lovely cedar.  We had to watch them fall.

They went so softly under the loud flails of air,
Before that fury they went down like feathers,
With all the hundred springs that flowered in their hair,
and all the years, endured in all the weathers -
To fall as if they were nothing, as if they were feathers."
-  May Sarton, We Have Seen the Wind, 1938 

"The pleasant air and wind,
with sacred thoughts do
feed my serious mind."
-  Rowland Watkyns, The Poet's Soliloquy  

"The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds,and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears."
-  John Muir 

 "I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Day of Sunshine   

" This is what I have heard
at last the wind in December
lashing the old trees with rain
unseen rain racing along the tiles
under the moon
wind rising and falling
wind with many clouds
trees in the night wind"
-  W.S. MERWIN 

"We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and
the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat."
-  Mark Twain 

"Everything passes away — suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence.  The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth.  There is no man who does not know that.  Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?"
-  Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard  

"The winds gives me
Enough fallen leaves
To make a fire"
-  Ryokan  

"Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky.  When we think of the sky, we tend to look up,
but the sky actually begins at the earth."
-  Diane Ackerman  

CLOUDS

When I was traveling last week from Tiruvarur to Mannargudi by road it was cloudy and at Tiruvarur temple above the Gopuram lot of birds were flying in the background of excellent clouds and my daughter was clicking lot of photos of them then I was thinking about two poets one the great Kalidasa and his Meghadutham which of course is a master piece beyond comparison and then Shelly's immortal poem, 'the cloud' which made an ever lasting impression on me. Let me share with you the pleasure of reading that poem wherein he has given a picture of Hindu philosophy see in my comments below and at the end see the verse I wrote titled Limitations of knowledge and read the info at the end of the message and try it out when the sky is blue pregnant women and those with weak eyes must not do this.


I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

No other English poet has expressed so beautifully about the heavenly drama the thunder and lightning plays in the sky. If it was Kalidasa who gave life to the great 'Himalayo nama nagaadhiraja' and converted the ice mountain to an affectionate father with so much love for his daughter, it was Shelly who made the cloud a 'daughter of the Earth and the water and the nursling of the sky'

And no other English poet has translated the

'Punarabhi jananam, punarabhi maranam; concept of our philosophy as beautifully as P.B. Shelly has done in this poem.

"I am the daughter of Earth and Water.....I change but I cannot die." and again, " like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.A western mind creating this ? Amazing !


LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

I know how clouds are formed
I also know its uses
I also know the various names of its various forms and shapes; be they the
The ragged Fractus,
Or the superposed layers of Duplicatus,
Or the dense and dark Opacus,
Or the small flattened Humilis,
Or the small turreted Castellanus,
Or the comma shaped Uncinus,
Or the hairlike Fibratus,
Or the banded Radiatus,
Or the dense Spissatus,
Or the cauliflowerlike Congetus,
Or the entangled Intortus,
I also know nephography,
I can even make a cloud
But I can never direct the smoke
Or gas or dirt to the specific form I want in the sky
That is beyond my artistic skills
And scientific capabilities.

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2009/04/limitations-of-knowledge.html

Last important piece of information to prove that everyone has the ability to make optimum use of creative visualization I had a Guruji who taught me something and everyone can easily try this. Just keep gazing at a small cloud in the blue sky and wish it to disappear either by dissolving or merging with another cloud nearby depending upon your intensity of visualization it will and it does definitely disappear

LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

                                               LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

I know how clouds are formed
I also know its uses
I also know the various names of its various forms and shapes; be they the
The ragged Fractus,
Or the superposed layers of Duplicatus,
Or the dense and dark Opacus,
Or the small flattened Humilis,
Or the small turreted Castellanus,
Or the comma shaped Uncinus,
Or the hairlike Fibratus,
Or the banded Radiatus,
Or the dense Spissatus,
Or the cauliflowerlike Congetus,
Or the entangled Intortus,
I also know nephography,
I can even make a cloud
But I can never direct the smoke
Or gas or dirt to the specific form I want in the sky
That is beyond my artistic skills
And scientific capabilities.