The Rainbow

by D.H. Lawrence

"...she saw the dun atmosphere over the blackened hills opposite, the dark

blotches of houses, slate roofed and amorphous, the old church-tower

standing up in hideous obsoleteness above raw new houses on the crest

of the hill, the amorphous, brittle, hard edged new houses advancing from

Beldover to meet the corrupt new houses from Lethley, the houses of

Lethley advancing to mix with the houses of Hainor, a dry, brittle,

terrible corruption spreading over the face of the land, and she

was sick with nausea so deep that she perished as she sat.

And then, in the blowing clouds, she saw a band of faint

iridescence colouring in faint colours a portion of the hill.

And forgetting startled, she looked for the hovering colour and

saw a rainbow forming itself. In one place it gleamed fiercely, and,

her heart anguished with hope, she sought the shadow of iris where

the bow should be. Steadily the colour gathered, mysteriously, from

nowhere, it took presence upon itself, there was a faint, vast rainbow.

The arc bended and strengthened itself till it arched indomitable,

making great architecture of light and colour and the space of heaven,

its pedestals luminous in the corruption of new houses on the lowhill,

its arch the top of heaven. And the rainbow stood on the earth.

She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate

on the face of the world's corruption were living still,

that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life

in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration,

that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new

growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven.

She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture,the old, brittle

corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up

in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven."

~*~

Hope is the thing with feathers, That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words, ~ Emily Dickinson ~

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The Rainbow picture on this page was taken by
Mrs.Van Bourgognie on a Sunday afternoon in Mechelen, Belgium.

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