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."
Do you know the last thing out of Pandora's box? That's right! Hope.
