THE DELUGE.
Then the rain fell. In great sheets, like rivers, it poured upon the valleys. The thunders rolled, the lightnings flashed, the rivers overflowed their banks. The winds howled, and great trees were torn up by the roots.
For forty days this storm continued—forty days and forty nights. Every living thing left upon the face of the earth was drowned. But the ark, with its inmates, was borne up by the waters in safety. At last, one morning when Noah and his people awoke, they could see that the storm had ceased; the clouds were separating, and the sun was sending its rays down through the mist upon the flooded earth below.
Then came the beautiful rainbow, spanning the heavens in the west, and reflecting its wonderful colors in the great sea below.
THE RAINBOW.
Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky
When storms prepare to part,
I ask not proud philosophy
To teach me what thou art.
Still seem as to my childhood's sight,
A midway station given,
For happy spirits to alight
Betwixt the earth and heaven.
How glorious is thy girdle cast
O'er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirror'd in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down.
As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.
For faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age,
That first spoke peace to man.
—T. Campbell.
Never was rainbow so beautiful! Then the voice of God spoke from out the skies to Noah, "This shall be to you a bow of promise. Never again shall the earth and the people be destroyed by water."