The Earthward Pilgrimage (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: XXV. THE CATARACT AND THE RAINBOW. The dice of God are always loaded. Greek. Pbovebb. He my servant is dear unto me who is free from enmity, the friend of all nature, merciful, exempt from pride and selfishness, the same in pain and pleasure, patient of wrongs, contented, constantly devout, of subdued passions and firm resolves; ... of whom mankind are not afraid, and who of mankind is not afraid; . . . who is unsolicitous ahout the event of things. Bhagavat Geeta. The moving Finger writes, and, having writ, Moves on: not all your piety and wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. With Earth's first clay they did the last Man knead, And there of the last Harvest sowed the seed: And the first Morning of Creation wrote What the last Dawn of Eeckoning shall read. Omar Khayyam. THE CATARACT AND THE RAINBOW. STOOD by Niagara, gazing on its smooth pitch, and its islet of green, holding their own steadfastly above the mad dash and deafening roar of the waters. The winds came howling out of the cave.rn beneath: on the pendent harp they changed to melodies. Above all stood the shimmering rainbow, and its sweet prophecy said, ?Over this mad rage hovers the circle of inviolable law. No drop of the cataract but gathers to its sphere, and rises or falls, by the law that shapes and moves the gliding planets overhead. The winds too have their eternal channels. Fear thou not, therefore, the wild roar of human passions, nor the seemingly unchained freaks of human will. Climb to their table-rock, and over them shall be seen bending the luminous arch that softly chains them in their pit. What is it in the idea of Necessity from which we recoil ? Alas, cries one, it makes us machines, the good man a machine tur...