> show me the thing in the world that is more beautiful than clouds! They are play and eyebright, they are blessings and gifts of God, they are wrath and the p

> show me the thing in the world that is more beautiful than clouds! They are play and eyebright, they are blessings and gifts of God, they are wrath and the power of death. They are delicate, soft and peaceful like the souls of newborns, they are beautiful, rich and bounties like good angels, they are dark, inescapable and ruthless like the emissaries of death. They float silver in a thin layer, they sail laughingly white with a golden edge, they stand resting in yellow, red and bluish colors. They slink darkly and slowly like murderers, they rush headlong like mad riders, they hang sad and dreaming in pale heights like melancholy hermits. They have the forms of blessed islands and the forms of blessing angels, they are like threatening hands, fluttering sails, migrating cranes. They hover between God's heaven and poor earth as beautiful parables of all human longing, belonging to both — dreams of the earth in which she nestles her tainted soul against the pure heaven. They are the eternal symbol of all wandering, all searching, longing and longing for home. And just as they hang timidly and longingly and defiantly between earth and heaven, so the souls of men hang timidly and longingly and defiantly between time and eternity.