Lake Forest College Lake Forest College Publications All-College Writing Contest 5-1-1985 John Constable: Clouds Barbara Wood-Prince Lake Forest College Follow this and additional works at: http://publications.lakeforest.edu/allcollege_writing_contest Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Wood-Prince, Barbara, "John Constable: Clouds" (1985). All-College Writing Contest. http://publications.lakeforest.edu/allcollege_writing_contest/29 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Lake Forest College Publications. It has been accepted for inclusion in All-College Writing Contest by an authorized administrator of Lake Forest College Publications. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. JOHN CONSTABLE: CLOUDS by Barbara Wood-Prince I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of ocean shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain 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. From 'The Cloud" by Percy Bysshe Shelly (Published 1820) The appeal of clouds to the Romantic minds of the late 18th and early 19th century is in perfect accord with their love of the changeable, the indefinite, the distant and the mysterious. Yet this 'Age of Reason' was compelled to study, analyze and probe for answers to these mysteries.