Library of Information on Women's Issues
A Dry Nights Sleep
presents
Dreams by Olive Schreiner
27 of 48
hate! I cannot forgive! I cannot forgive!' And I went and stood outside
his door in the dark, and I heard him cry, 'I have not sinned so, not so!
If I have torn my fellows' flesh ever so little, I have kneeled down and
kissed the wound with my mouth till it was healed. I have not willed that
any soul shall be lost through hate of me. If they have but fancied that I
wronged them I have lain down on the ground before them that they might
tread on me, and so, seeing my humiliation, forgive and not be lost through
hating me; they have not cared that my soul should be lost; they have not
willed to save me; they have not tried that I should forgive them!'
"I said to him, 'See here, be thou content; do not forgive: forget this
soul and its injury; go on your way. In the next world perhaps--'
"He cried, 'Go from me, you understand nothing! What is the next world to
me! I am lost now, today. I cannot see the sunlight shine, the dust is in
my throat, the sand is in my eyes! Go from me, you know nothing! Oh, once
again before I die to see that the world is beautiful! Oh, God, God, I
cannot live and not love. I cannot live and hate. Oh, God, God, God!' So
I left him crying out and came back here."
God said, "This man's soul must be saved."
And the angel said "How?"
God said, "Go down you, and save it."
The angel said, "What more shall I do?"
Then God bent down and whispered in the angel's ear, and the angel spread
out its wings and went down to earth.
And partly I woke, sitting there upon the broken stone with my head on my
knee; but I was too weary to rise. I heard the wind roam through the olive
trees and among the ruined arches, and then I slept again.
The angel went down and found the man with the bitter heart and took him by
the hand, and led him to a certain spot.
Now the man wist not where it was the angel would take him nor what he
would show him there. And when they came the angel shaded the man's eyes
with his wing, and when he moved it the man saw somewhat on the earth
before them. For God had given it to that angel to unclothe a human soul;
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