(Also summer’s cloud.) A cloud such as is seen on a summer day, esp. one that is fleeting or does not spoil the fine weather. Also allusively.
1605. Shaks., Macb., III. iv. 111. Can such things … ouercome vs like a Summers Clowd, Without our speciall wonder?
1671. Milton, P. R., III. 222. A shelter and a kind of shading cool Interposition, as a summers cloud.
1727. Watts, Hope in Darkness, i. in Horæ Lyricæ, I. (1743), 133. What tho’ a short Eclipse his [sc. God’s] Beauties shrowd ’Tis but a Morning Vapour, or a Summer-Cloud.
1792. S. Rogers, Pleas. Mem., Poems (1839), 3. As summer-clouds flash forth electric fire.
1820. Scott, Abbot, xxxvi. Floating in the wind, as lightly as summer clouds.
1893. E. Phillpotts, Summer Clouds, 54. There are people in the world … who would say that we had had a row to-day…. I should describe the matter myself as—well, merely a passing summer-cloud.
