A sunset is one of the most beautiful and magical things to experience in life, and they happen every single day!

Sunsets occur when the sun passes out of view below the Earth's horizon. This results in a mixture of colors (typically shades of blue, red, orange, and pink) appearing across the sky, in a very aesthetically pleasing way. Sunsets are particularly stunning on beaches where the horizon is at sea level.

sunset - 12/18/98

it's like yellow orange bark tangled in glitter, giving off rays like that of a million pepper halogens. as you walk toward it to take a look like a tortoise approaches what, to us, is nothing, you feel you should run. you might as well be that green sloth. as the electric hawk, made of shadows and fire nears, you try to hide and somehow find warmth in what you can't see. it's blurring the colors and shapes that you see as you dive and submerge yourself in the last of the golden syrup as it slowly boils and blisters your skin, but it's gone and the next time you see it will only come after you accept its loss. you've got nothing but yourself as your overhead turns
blue
        orange
                pink
                        violet
                                black

One day he was walking along a cobblestone road, the kind that presently looked orange and pink under the setting sun of Naples because the sky was that very colour and the cobblestone road had the uncanny habit of reflecting that which was upon it and over it. To his left, the whitewashed houses were in the shadows of large pines and the forms of doors and windows made them look like paintings of horrified people with their mouths and eyes opened quite wide. But the trees were not their oppressors, so he climbed one of them to get a better view over the harbour.

He got sap on his hands as he made his way up, dangerously high, but he didn't care. When he got to the top, he could see the disc of the sun, hovering, the dial-less clock face, a sailing boat in the water below acting as a pendulum that had forgotten to swing back. From this perspective, the doors and windows of the whitewashed houses quite far below became thin lines and now looked quite happy. He wiped his hands on his pants, and to the right, the hills rose up out of the two-dimensional flatness of the afternoon to the reality of the time between sleeplessness and sleep.

A hummingbird hovered before his closed eyes. Upon opening them, he was so surprised by its presence that he breathed sharply and fell. On his way down, the mountains disappeared behind the whitewashed houses whose doors and windows once again resembled paintings of horrified people and he looked at his hands and noticed the sap and he heard in his head the tick-tock of the ships at the dock rocking easily in the current under the sun whose demise drew nearer...

The cobblestones drew nearer and he felt a gust of wind as the hummingbird lifted him slowly toward the stars that had now became the glittering hair of the city.

Paintings glaze the sky,
The final dance
Of quiet Nature

Endless blue
Interrupted by a spark of brilliance
Liquid colours of light

Melted rubies glow
Amidst strokes of violet
Dissipated by the sun

Yellow fades to red
Bursting into gold
Fireworks of a softer kind

The show ends slowly
Golden eye sleeping
As silver ascends its watch
Guardian of the night.

As an Australian visiting the US, I found quite a few things strange about their culture. One thing that Americans do that Australians do not is clap at the end of a movie. Granted, in Hollywood there may be some chance of having someone involved with the production present, but it is unlikely.

One day, after climbing up a mountain in the late afternoon we sat down among other hikers who had made the climb, like us, for the promise of a spectacular sunset. While perhaps helped along by air pollution, the sunset was indeed spectacular. When the sun finally went down and the audience was left in dusk, they spontaniously began to clap, in appreciation at the end of the show.

My question is: They were applauding whom?

Sunset

THE river sleeps beneath the sky,
And clasps the shadows to its breast;
The crescent moon shines dim on high;
And in the lately radiant west
The gold is fading into gray.
Now stills the lark his festive lay,
And mourns with me the dying day.

While in the south the first faint star
Lifts to the night its silver face,
And twinkles to the moon afar
Across the heaven's graying space,

Low murmurs reach me from the town,
As Day puts on her sombre crown,
And shakes her mantle darkly down.


-from Lyrics of Lowly Life, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1869)

Sun"set" (?), Sun"set`ting, n.

1.

The descent of the sun below the horizon; also, the time when the sun sets; evening. Also used figuratively.

'T is the sunset of life gives me mystical lore. Campbell.

2.

Hence, the region where the sun sets; the west.

Sunset shell Zool., a West Indian marine bivalve (Tellina radiata) having a smooth shell marked with radiating bands of varied colors resembling those seen at sunset or before sunrise; -- called also rising sun.

 

© Webster 1913.

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