A BIRD OF PASSAGE 



bring all your gods with you — gods of love, mercy, 

 gentleness, altruism; but I know them not. Your 

 prayers will fall upon ears of stone, your appealing 

 gesture upon eyes of stone, your cries for mercy 

 upon hearts of stone. I shall be neither your enemy 

 nor your friend. I shall be utterly indifferent to you. 

 My floods will drown you, my winds wreck you, my 

 fires burn you, my quicksands suck you down, and 

 not know what they are doing. My earth is a the- 

 atre of storms and cyclones, of avalanches and earth- 

 quakes, of lightnings and cloudbursts; wrecks and 

 ruins strew my course. All my elements and forces 

 are at your service; all my fluids and gases and sol- 

 ids; my stars in their courses will fight on your side, 

 if you put and keep yourself in right relations to 

 them. My atoms and electrons will build your 

 bouses, my lightning do your errands, my winds sail 

 your ships, on the same terms. You cannot live 

 without my air and my water and my warmth; but 

 each of them is a source of power that will crush or 

 engulf or devour you before it will turn one hair's- 

 breadth from its course. Your trees will be uprooted 

 by my tornadoes, your fair fields will be laid waste 

 by floods or fires; my mountains will fall on your 

 delicate forms and utterly crush and bury them; my 

 glaciers will overspread vast areas and banish or de- 

 stroy whole tribes and races of your handiwork; the 

 shrinking and wrinkling crust of my earth will fold 

 in its insensate bosom vast forests of your tropical 



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