Dreams by Olive Schreiner (bookstand for reading .txt) 📕

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.