You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds. – Henry David Thoreau

It was very dark; but in the murky sky there were masses of cloud which shone with a lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that had been heated in a furnace, and were growing cold. – Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter XLII

Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”