in Thoreau’s Journal:

We are rained and snowed on with gems…What a world we live in! Where are the jewelers’ shops? There is nothing handsomer than a snow-flake and a dew-drop.

Also:

January 6, 1859:

I felt my spirits rise when I had got out of the road into the open fields, and the sky had a new appearance. I stepped along more buoyantly. There was a warm sunset in the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds, like dusky flames, stood over it, and then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The life, the joy that is in blue sky after a storm. There is no account of the blue sky in history. Before, I walked in the ruts of travel, now I adventured….

And