In stanza one, the speaker—a cloud—describes some of its roles in the natural world. These range from nurturing to destructive. The cloud waters plants, fills streams, keeps flowers alive with dew, and creates rain and hailstorms.
Next, Lighting is introduced as the cloud's "pilot," guiding it and staying constant through extremes of weather and feeling. The cloud describes its symbiotic relationship to this "pilot," which carries it over natural forms and mediates its relationship to other personified elements of nature, such as thunder or heaven itself.
In stanza three, the cloud describes its pivotal role in the very mechanisms of sunrise and sunset. It carries the Sunrise on its back, illuminating mountains and animals. At the end of day, the cloud rests tranquilly as the sun sets and creates a pervasive, quiet peace.
Then the cloud describes the moon, personifying it as a beautiful woman who steps among the stars. The cloud explains that it sometimes likes to tear itself open like a tent, allowing the moon to illuminate bodies of water and other natural phenomena.
In stanza five, the cloud develops into a storm, overpowering the sun instead of facilitating its rise. The cloud takes center stage, demonstrating its power to block out the sun and the moon, affecting every other part of nature during a storm, yet without actually harming or destroying natural systems—the earth is still described as "laughing" as rains fall.
Finally, in the poem's closing stanza, the cloud must rebuild itself following the storm. It describes the neverending natural life cycle that it repeats with each rain, collaborating with rain, earth, and sky—always changing, but never assuming total dominance over other elements of nature, and never dying away.
