is a typical description.[73] Another indication of the dislike of this season is found in a curious “Pastoral” by Washbourne in which hell is represented as a place where it is “alwaies winter.”[74] It will be observed later that a sense of joy in winter scenes is one of the very early indications of a reviving interest in the out-door world. Correspondent with the dislike and neglect of the grand and the terrible in Nature is a similar feeling toward such aspects of the external world as especially suggest mystery, remoteness, unseen forces. That this is true may be seen by a study of the sky phenomena that appear, or fail to appear, in this classical poetry. The day-time sky is but briefly and vaguely mentioned or it passes unobserved. A phrase so imaginative as Blackmore’s “blue gulph of interposing sky”[75] is rare. In general it is only the more striking aspects of the sky that are noticed, such aspects as would catch the attention of a child or of a mere casual observer. Fleeting, delicate effects are unheeded. Clouds receive little attention except as they portend or accompany a storm, and even then their chief use is in similitudes. Apparently the best-known appearance of the day-time sky is the rainbow. But though it is often mentioned there is singularly little variety in the phrases used to describe it. A brief summary of those phrases most frequently used is interesting: “Painted clouds;” “the clouds’ gaudy bow;” “the gaudy heavenly bow;” “the watery bow;” “the painted bow;” “painted tears;” “the gaudy drapery of heaven’s fair bow;” “the showery arch;” the bow “painted by Iris;” the bow “deck’d like a gaudy bride;” “the painted arch of summer skies,”[76] and so on through a wearisome list of kaleidoscopic combinations of the same words. The constant repetition of adjectives so unmeaning as “watery” and “showery,” or so external and artificial as “gaudy” and “painted” is as characteristic of the general attitude toward Nature as is the fact that the attention of poets should have been concentrated on the obvious beauties of the rainbow rather than on the finer, more subtle charms of the sky. In the same way sunrise, and especially sunset, are often mentioned and occasionally described. But there is practically no discriminating and appreciative study of what was actually to be seen in the heavens. It was more natural to sit at home and read the classics, and then announce that the golden god of day “drives down his flaming chariot to the sea.”[77] Twilight had, as might be expected, little charm or suggestiveness. Moonlight also plays a most subordinate part in this poetry.[78] We seldom find anything more direct or vivid than the time-honored statement that “fair” or “pale” Cynthia “mounts the vaulted sky,” and “adorns the night” with her silver beams.[79]