Mood Lesson

What is the mood?

Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow…I went carefully from post to post with my glass… These round knobs were not ornamental… they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing—food for thought and also for vultures…They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way.

“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!”

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”

What is the mood?

A little way down the pasture there was a knoll that commanded a view of most of the farm. The animals rushed to the top of it and gazed round them in the clear morning light. Yes, it was theirs—everything that they could see was theirs! In the ecstasy of that thought they gamboled round and round, they hurled themselves into the air in great leaps of excitement. They rolled in the dew, they cropped mouthfuls of the sweet summer grass, they kicked up clods of the black earth and snuffed its rich scent. It was as though they had never seen these things before, and even now they could hardly believe that it was all their own.

What is the mood?

The Buddha went quietly on his way, lost in thought. His peaceful countenance was neither happy nor sad. He seemed to be smiling gently inwardly. With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, and unfading light, an invulnerable peace.

What is the mood?

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation. What was it --I paused to think --what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?