Dreams - Olive Schreiner (latest novels to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Olive Schreiner
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Book online «Dreams - Olive Schreiner (latest novels to read TXT) 📗». Author Olive Schreiner
It is not meet a soul should see Heaven and be cast out again!”
And God laid his hand on me, and said, “Go back to earth: that which you
seek is there.”
I awoke: it was morning. The silence and darkness of the night were gone.
Through my narrow attic window I saw the light of another day. I closed my
eyes and turned towards the wall: I could not look upon the dull grey
world.
In the streets below, men and women streamed past by hundreds; I heard the
beat of their feet on the pavement. Men on their way to business; servants
on errands; boys hurrying to school; weary professors pacing slowly the old
street; prostitutes, men and women, dragging their feet wearily after last
night’s debauch; artists with quick, impatient footsteps; tradesmen for
orders; children to seek for bread. I heard the stream beat by. And at
the alley’s mouth, at the street corner, a broken barrel-organ was playing;
sometimes it quavered and almost stopped, then went on again, like a broken
human voice.
I listened: my heart scarcely moved; it was as cold as lead. I could not
bear the long day before me; and I tried to sleep again; yet still I heard
the feet upon the pavement. And suddenly I heard them cry loud as they
beat, “We are seeking!—we are seeking!—we are seeking!” and the broken
barrel-organ at the street corner sobbed, “The Beautiful!—the Beautiful!—
the Beautiful!” And my heart, which had been dead, cried out with every
throb, “Love!—Truth!—the Beautiful!—the Beautiful!” It was the music I
had heard in Heaven that I could not sing there.
And fully I awoke.
Upon the faded quilt, across my bed a long yellow streak of pale London
sunlight was lying. It fell through my narrow attic window.
I laughed. I rose.
I was glad the long day was before me.
Paris and London.
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