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A Dry Nights Sleep
presents
Dreams by Olive Schreiner
28 of 48
to take from it all those outward attributes of form, and colour, and age,
and sex, whereby one man is known from among his fellows and is marked off
from the rest, and the soul lay before them, bare, as a man turning his eye
inwards beholds himself.
They saw its past, its childhood, the tiny life with the dew upon it; they
saw its youth when the dew was melting, and the creature raised its
Lilliputian mouth to drink from a cup too large for it, and they saw how
the water spilt; they saw its hopes that were never realized; they saw its
hours of intellectual blindness, men call sin; they saw its hours of all-
radiating insight, which men call righteousness; they saw its hour of
strength, when it leaped to its feet crying, "I am omnipotent;" its hour of
weakness, when it fell to the earth and grasped dust only; they saw what it
might have been, but never would be.
The man bent forward.
And the angel said, "What is it?"
He answered, "It is I! it is myself!" And he went forward as if he would
have lain his heart against it; but the angel held him back and covered his
eyes.
Now God had given power to the angel further to unclothe that soul, to take
from it all those outward attributes of time and place and circumstance
whereby the individual life is marked off from the life of the whole.
Again the angel uncovered the man's eyes, and he looked. He saw before him
that which in its tiny drop reflects the whole universe; he saw that which
marks within itself the step of the furthest star, and tells how the
crystal grows under ground where no eye has seen it; that which is where
the germ in the egg stirs; which moves the outstretched fingers of the
little newborn babe, and keeps the leaves of the trees pointing upward;
which moves where the jelly-fish sail alone on the sunny seas, and is where
the lichens form on the mountains' rocks.
And the man looked.
And the angel touched him.
But the man bowed his head and shuddered. He whispered--"It is God!"
And the angel re-covered the man's eyes. And when he uncovered them there
was one walking from them a little way off;--for the angel had re-clothed
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