Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody's clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow.
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.
Sound--
That stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud--
Is not its form--its voice--most palpable and loud?
Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.
The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.
Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day And make me travel forth without my cloak, To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, Hiding they brav'ry in their rotten smoke?
There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.
America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
When it looks like the sun isn't going to shine any more, God puts a rainbow in the clouds. Each one of us has the possibility, the responsibility, the probability to be the rainbow in the clouds.