But none answered, and so again we walked onward, silent. The wind had fallen, and in the noon-heat we began to grow weary. It was with relief that we saw the gleam of water between the branches of a little wood of birches, which waded towards it through a tide of bracken. Beyond the birks shimmered a rainbow; a stray cloud had trailed from glen to glen, and suddenly broken among the tree-tops.
"There goes Yesterday!" cried the Body laughingly—alluding to the saying that the morning rainbow is the ghost of the day that passed at dawn. The next moment he broke into a fragment of song:—
Brother and Sister, wanderers they
Out of the Golden Yesterday—
Thro' the dusty Now and the dim To-morrow
Hand-in-hand go Joy and Sorrow.
"Yes, joy and sorrow, O glad Body," exclaimed the Will—"but it is the joy only that is vain as the rainbow, which has no other message. It should be called the Bow of Sorrow."
"Not so," said the Soul gently, "or, if so, not as you mean, dear friend:—
It is not Love that gives the clearest sight:
For out of bitter tears, and tears unshed,
Riseth the Rainbow of Sorrow overhead,
And 'neath the Rainbow is the clearest light.
The Will smiled:—
"I too must have my say, dear poets:—
Where rainbows rise through sunset rains
By shores forlorn of isles forgot,
A solitary Voice complains
'The World is here, the World is not.'
The Voice may be the wind, or sea,
Or spirit of the sundown West:
Or, mayhap, some sweet air set free
From off the Islands of the Blest: