vimalan61

[vimalan61]

requested by 179west

[vimalan61]

[vimalan61]

Brilliant sunshine turns the sky to the clearest and loveliest light blue behind us, and the hillsides – greeny brown when one is near – are melted in the golden haze into a wonderful pale pink – golden pink – mysterious and almost shadowless, and frail like a soft cloud upon the water.

Further away the great giant castle of Samothrace stands up clad in every misty shade of blue, as though already half melted into the sky and sea between which it is suspended. And this afternoon when I come back it will all be quite different.

Our island will be all blue – rich, many tinted and delicate, with deep violet shadows throwing each hill into relief, shaming the cruder colouring of the sea and sky. And Samothrace will be a clear, cold, steely mountain on the horizon – beauty aloof, unapproachable, soulless! But best of all perhaps is the evening, when the island becomes deep dark green and violet and purple, and the sea in the bay brightens to burnished steel, and after the flaming crimson streamers  of the sunset have died away, the dark masses of the hills stand outlined against the marvellous pale green sky of the dying day – a colour so clear that you seem to be looking through to the outer limits of space, to where a star shines golden like a fragment of the vanished sun.

What an unutterably beautiful world God has made, and what sad sordid ugliness man puts into it!