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Chapter 13 - Laws |
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a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?" |
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| And he answered: You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them. Like children
playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy
and then destroy them with laughter. But while you
build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand
to the shore, And when you destroy them the ocean
laughs with you. Verily the ocean laughs always with
the innocent. |
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| But what of those to whom life is not an ocean,
and man-made laws are not sand-towers, But to whom
life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they
would carve it in their own likeness? What of the
cripple who hates dancers? What of the ox who loves
his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest
stray and vagrant things? |
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| What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin,
and calls all others naked and shameless? And of
him who comes early to the wedding feast, and when
over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts
are violation and all feasters law-breakers? |
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| What shall I say of these save that they too stand
in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are
their laws. And what is the sun to them but a caster
of shadows? And what is it to acknowledge the laws
but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the
earth? But you who walk facing the sun, what images
drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with
the wind, what weather vane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke
but upon no man's prison door? |
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| What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble
against no man's iron chains? And who is he that
shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your
garment yet leave it in no man's path? People of
Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen
the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the
skylark not to sing? |
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