John Ruskin - The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century

ἐμπιπλῶν τροφῆς καὶ ἐυφροσύνης
τὰς καρδίας ήμῶν.

ἐμπιπλῶν ἀνέμου καὶ ἀφροσύνης
τὰς γαστέρας ἡμῶν.

Ἀλλ᾽ ἔμενον, νεφέλῃσιν ἐοικότες ἅς τε Κρονίων
Νηνεμίης ἔστησεν ἐπ᾽ ἀκροπόλοισιν ὄρεσσιν,
Ἀτρέμας, ὄφρ᾽ εὕδῃσι μένος Βορέαο καὶ ἄλλων
Ζαχρειῶν ἀνέμων, οἵ τε νέφεα σκιόεντα
Πνοιῇσιν λυγυρῇσι διασκιδνᾶσιν ἀέντες‧
Ὡσ Δαναοὶ Τρῶας μένον ἔμπεδον, οὐδ᾽ ἐφέβοντο.

"The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,
Taking his last look of Assyria's empire.
How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds, 4 4 'Deepening' clouds.—Byron never uses an epithet vainly,—he is the most accurate, and therefore the most powerful, of all modern describers. The deepening of the cloud is essentially necessary to the redness of the orb. Ordinary observers are continually unaware of this fact, and imagine that a red sun can be darker than the sky round it! Thus Mr. Gould, though a professed naturalist, and passing most of his life in the open air, over and over again, in his 'British Birds,' draws the setting sun dark on the sky!
Like the blood he predicts. 5 5 'Like the blood he predicts.'—The astrological power of the planet Mars was of course ascribed to it in the same connection with its red color. The reader may be interested to see the notice, in 'Modern Painters,' of Turner's constant use of the same symbol; partly an expression of his own personal feeling, partly, the employment of a symbolic language known to all careful readers of solar and stellar tradition. "He was very definitely in the habit of indicating the association of any subject with circumstances of death, especially the death of multitudes, by placing it under one of his most deeply crimsoned sunset skies. "The color of blood is thus plainly taken for the leading tone in the storm-clouds above the 'Slave-ship.' It occurs with similar distinctness in the much earlier picture of 'Ulysses and Polypheme,' in that of 'Napoleon at St. Helena,' and, subdued by softer hues, in the 'Old Téméraire.' "The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings. "Another feeling, traceable in several of his former works, is an acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for labor, or knowledge, or delight, is passed forever. There is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in the churchyard of Kirkby Lonsdale, and the boy climbing for his kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of Brignal-bank; it is in the same tone of thought that he has placed here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered flanks of rock,—the sepulchral stones of the great mountain Field of Death." If not in vain,
Thou sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,
I have outwatch'd ye, reading ray by ray
The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble
For what he brings the nations, 't is the furthest
Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm!
An earthquake should announce so great a fall—
A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk
To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon
Its everlasting page the end of what
Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou true sun!
The burning oracle of all that live ,
As fountain of all life , and symbol of
Him who bestows it , wherefore dost thou limit
Thy lore unto calamity? 6 6 'Thy lore unto calamity.'—It is, I believe, recognized by all who have in any degree become interested in the traditions of Chaldean astrology, that its warnings were distinct,—its promises deceitful. Horace thus warns Leuconoe against reading the Babylonian numbers to learn the time of her death,—he does not imply their promise of previous happiness; and the continually deceptive character of the Delphic oracle itself, tempted always rather to fatal than to fortunate conduct, unless the inquirer were more than wise in his reading. Byron gathers into the bitter question all the sorrow of former superstition, while in the lines italicized, just above, he sums in the briefest and plainest English, all that we yet know, or may wisely think, about the Sun. It is the ' Burning oracle' (other oracles there are by sound, or feeling, but this by fire) of all that lives; the only means of our accurate knowledge of the things round us, and that affect our lives: it is the fountain of all life,—Byron does not say the origin ;—the origin of life would be the origin of the sun itself; but it is the visible source of vital energy, as the spring is of a stream, though the origin is the sea. "And symbol of Him who bestows it."—This the sun has always been, to every one who believes there is a bestower; and a symbol so perfect and beautiful that it may also be thought of as partly an apocalypse. Why not
Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine
All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart
A beam of hope athwart the future years,
As of wrath to its days? Hear me! oh, hear me!
I am thy worshiper, thy priest, thy servant—
I have gazed on thee at thy rise and fall,
And bow'd my head beneath thy mid-day beams,
When my eye dared not meet thee. I have watch'd
For thee, and after thee, and pray'd to thee,
And sacrificed to thee, and read, and fear'd thee,
And ask'd of thee, and thou hast answer'd—but
Only to thus much. While I speak, he sinks—
Is gone—and leaves his beauty, not his knowledge,
To the delighted west, which revels in
Its hues of dying glory. Yet what is
Death, so it be but glorious? 'T is a sunset;
And mortals may be happy to resemble
The gods but in decay."