So shines the setting sun on adverse skies, and paints a rainbow on the storm.

The image contrasts “adverse skies” and “storm” with the gentle, beautifying effects of sunset light and a rainbow. It suggests that hardship can be transfigured by a change in perspective or by the arrival of consolation—often read, in Watts’s religious-poetic idiom, as providence or grace shining through affliction. The line implies that beauty and hope are not the absence of trouble but something that can appear within it, turning turmoil into a scene with meaning. As a moral emblem, it encourages patience and trust: the storm is real, yet it can become the very backdrop against which reassurance becomes visible.