16. The silent sage sits in his sedate meditation, as the sky is unmoved with its capacity of containing all things within itself; but the earth is shaken and wasted by the dashing waves, and the fire is put down by its blazing flame, and every thing is moved about as monkey by the wind of its desires. 17. All the living beings abounding in the earth and water, and those flying in the air, as well as such as live in the hills and on trees; together with the gods and giants, are alike doomed to death and regeneration, as the ephemeral insects, worms and flies. 18. Time—the greatest slaughterer, destroys the gods, giants, gandharvas and all, with its many arms of ages and yugas, and of years, months, days and nights, as a herdsman kills his cattle, which he has reared up himself. (Time feeds upon what it has fed himself). 19. All these rise and fall in the eventful ocean of time, and having leapt and jumped and danced awhile, sink in the abyss of the fathomless whirl of death, from which none can rise again. 20. All sorts of beings living in the fourteen spheres of the world, are carried away as dust and ashes by the gust of death, to the hollow womb of air, where they disappear as empty clouds in the autumnal sky. 21. The high heaven which is ever clad in the clean and clear attire of the atmosphere, and wears the frame work of the stars as a cap or crown on its head, holds the two lights of the sun and moon in its either hand, and shows us the works of gods in the skies. (Heaven is the book of God, before thee set &c. Milton). 22. It remains unmoved for ever, and never changes its sides composed of the four quarters of heaven, notwithstanding vicissitudes of the sky, the rushing of the winds, the tremor of the earth, the roaring of the clouds and the intense heat of the sun (All which it bears as patiently as the fixed trees and stones on earth). 23. And all things continue in their destined course, whether they that are conscious or those which are unconscious of these changes in nature; such are the appearance of meteors and portents in the sky, the roaring of clouds, the eclipses of the planets, and the trembling of the earth below. 24. The submarine fire sucks up the over flowing waters, of the seven great basins or oceans on earth; in the same manner as the all-destroying time, devours the creatures in all the different worlds. 25. All things are continually going on in their course, in the manner of the continued motion of the (sadágati) of the current air: Namely; all earth born worms moving on and returning into the bowels of the earth; the birds of the air are moving in and flying on all sides of the sky; the fishes are swimming and skimming all about the waters, the beasts returning to their caverns in earth and the hills, and such is the case with the inhabitants of all the continents and islands lying in the womb of this world. CHAPTER LXVII.