Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/259

 and rings of chains, and spheres of chain-rings. And Kamanita and Vasitthi now guided their binary-star in harmonious flight among the other stars and double stars of their group, as in a well-arranged roundelay, neither coming too near to their neighbours nor yet removing to too great a distance, while all the time, by a certain unspoken sympathy, informing one another of the exact direction and the just degree of motion. But at the same time, as it were, a common will was formed, which guided their whole group into the motion of the groups of their system, that then again, in turn, joined in the motion of other similar groups.

And this sympathy with the vast swaying rhythmic motion of the world-bodies, this universal and unceasing, this manifold interchange of movement—this was their relation to the universe, their outer life, their all-embracing and all-permeating charity.

That, however, which was here harmony of movement appeared to the gods of the air, who had their places beneath the star-gods, to be harmony of sound. By participation in its enjoyment, the heavenly genii, in the fields of Paradise, imitate these harmonies in their joyous melodies; and because a weak and far-off echo of these sometimes pierces to our earth—so weak that it can only be caught by the spiritual ears of the Enlightened—the seers talk mysteriously of the harmony of the spheres, and the great masters of music reproduce what they, in their ecstasy, have overheard—and this is the greatest delight of the children of men. But as the reality is to its ever dimmer-growing reflection, so is, to the rapture of human beings over notes and chords and melodies, the joy in existence of the gods of the stars. For just this is their joy of life, their joy in existence.