The world has become uglier since it began
to look into a mirror every day; so let us
settle for the mirror image and do without
an inspection of the original.

Karl Kraus, Simplicissimus

Diamond (Emigrant)

Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.

-George MacDonald,
At the Back of the North Wind

Ivory (Emigrant)

Ruby (Lassen)

Emerald (Point Reyes)

Pearl (Royal Gorge)

Crystal (King's Canyon)

Beauty is eternity gazing
at itself in a mirror.

-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Jade (Point Reyes)

Sapphire (Yosemite)

Blueness doth express trueness.

-Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels

Gold (Yosemite)

She is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.

-William Shakespeare,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Silver (Crater Lake)

On thy fair bosom, silver lake,
The wild swan spreads his snowy sail,
And round his breast the ripples break
As down he bears before the gale.

-James G. Percival,
To Seneca Lake

Mirage (Mono Lake)

Love is but a mist in the night,
a summer breeze, a bird in flight.
Love is a cloud floating in the sky,
the ashes in the wind, a soft anguished cry.
Love is the lonely cry of the loon,
the absence of light, the dark of the moon.
Love is the tears of the mind,
the throe of thought, the mirage of the blind.
Love is the tormented struggle to fathom the illusions,
the heart's aching pain, the soul's delusions.

-Dede, Love Is But A Mist

Amber (Oregon Coast)

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms...

-Alexander Pope,
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot