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

Dreams

 

by

 

Olive Schreiner

 

To a small girl-child, who may live to grasp somewhat of that which for us

is yet sight, not touch.

 

Note.

 

These Dreams are printed in the order in which they were written.

 

In the case of two there was a lapse of some years between the writing of

the first and last parts; these are placed according to the date of the

first part.

 

Olive Schreiner.

 

Matjesfontein,

Cape Colony,

South Africa.

November, 1890.

 

CONTENTS.

 

I. The Lost Joy.

 

II. The Hunter (From “The Story of of an African Farm”).

 

III. The Gardens of Pleasure.

 

IV. In a Far-off World.

 

V. Three Dreams in a Desert.

 

VI. A Dream of Wild Bees (Written as a letter to a friend).

 

VII. In a Ruined Chapel.

 

VIII. Life’s Gifts.

 

IX. The Artist’s Secret.

 

X. “I Thought I Stood.”

 

XI. The Sunlight Lay across My Bed.

 

I. THE LOST JOY.

 

All day, where the sunlight played on the sea-shore, Life sat.

 

All day the soft wind played with her hair, and the young, young face

looked out across the water. She was waiting—she was waiting; but she

could not tell for what.

 

All day the waves ran up and up on the sand, and ran back again, and the

pink shells rolled. Life sat waiting; all day, with the sunlight in her

eyes, she sat there, till, grown weary, she laid her head upon her knee and

fell asleep, waiting still.

 

Then a keel grated on the sand, and then a step was on the shore—Life

awoke and heard it. A hand was laid upon her, and a great shudder passed

through her. She looked up, and saw over her the strange, wide eyes of

Love—and Life now knew for whom she had sat there waiting.

 

And Love drew Life up to him.

 

And of that meeting was born a thing rare and beautiful—Joy, First-Joy was

it called. The sunlight when it shines upon the merry water is not so

glad; the rosebuds, when they turn back their lips for the sun’s first

kiss, are not so ruddy. Its tiny pulses beat quick. It was so warm, so

soft! It never spoke, but it laughed and played in the sunshine: and Love

and Life rejoiced exceedingly. Neither whispered it to the other, but deep

in its own heart each said, “It shall be ours for ever.”

 

Then there came a time—was it after weeks? was it after months? (Love and

Life do not measure time)—when the thing was not as it had been.

 

Still it played; still it laughed; still it stained its mouth with purple

berries; but sometimes the little hands hung weary, and the little eyes

looked out heavily across the water.

 

And Life and Love dared not look into each other’s eyes, dared not say,

“What ails our darling?” Each heart whispered to itself, “It is nothing,

it is nothing, tomorrow it will laugh out clear.” But tomorrow and

tomorrow came. They journeyed on, and the child played beside them, but

heavily, more heavily.

 

One day Life and Love lay down to sleep; and when they awoke, it was gone:

only, near them, on the grass, sat a little stranger, with wide-open eyes,

very soft and sad. Neither noticed it; but they walked apart, weeping

bitterly, “Oh, our Joy! our lost Joy! shall we see you no more for ever?”

 

The little soft and sad-eyed stranger slipped a hand into one hand of each,

and drew them closer, and Life and Love walked on with it between them.

And when Life looked down in anguish, she saw her tears reflected in its

soft eyes. And when Love, mad with pain, cried out, “I am weary, I am

weary! I can journey no further. The light is all behind, the dark is all

before,” a little rosy finger pointed where the sunlight lay upon the hillsides. Always its large eyes were sad and thoughtful: always the little

brave mouth was smiling quietly.

 

When on the sharp stones Life cut her feet, he wiped the blood upon his

garments, and kissed the wounded feet with his little lips. When in the

desert Love lay down faint (for Love itself grows faint), he ran over the

hot sand with his little naked feet, and even there in the desert found

water in the holes in the rocks to moisten Love’s lips with. He was no

burden—he never weighted them; he only helped them forward on their

journey.

 

When they came to the dark ravine where the icicles hang from the rocks—

for Love and Life must pass through strange drear places—there, where all

is cold, and the snow lies thick, he took their freezing hands and held

them against his beating little heart, and warmed them—and softly he drew

them on and on.

 

And when they came beyond, into the land of sunshine and flowers, strangely

the great eyes lit up, and dimples broke out upon the face. Brightly

laughing, it ran over the soft grass; gathered honey from the hollow tree;

and brought it them on the palm of its hand; carried them water in the

leaves of the lily, and gathered flowers and wreathed them round their

heads, softly laughing all the while. He touched them as their Joy had

touched them, but his fingers clung more tenderly.

 

So they wandered on, through the dark lands and the light, always with that

little brave smiling one between them. Sometimes they remembered that

first radiant Joy, and whispered to themselves, “Oh! could we but find him

also!”

 

At last they came to where Reflection sits; that strange old woman who has

always one elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hand, and who steals

light out of the past to shed it on the future.

 

And Life and Love cried out, “O wise one! tell us: when first we met, a

lovely radiant thing belonged to us—gladness without a tear, sunshine

without a shade. Oh! how did we sin that we lost it? Where shall we go

that we may find it?”

 

And she, the wise old woman, answered, “To have it back, will you give up

that which walks beside you now?”

 

And in agony Love and Life cried, “No!”

 

“Give up this!” said Life. “When the thorns have pierced me, who will suck

the poison out? When my head throbs, who will lay his tiny hands upon it

and still the beating? In the cold and the dark, who will warm my freezing

heart?”

 

And Love cried out, “Better let me die! Without Joy I can live; without

this I cannot. Let me rather die, not lose it!”

 

And the wise old woman answered, “O fools and blind! What you once had is

that which you have now! When Love and Life first meet, a radiant thing is

born, without a shade. When the roads begin to roughen, when the shades

begin to darken, when the days are hard, and the nights cold and long—then

it begins to change. Love and Life WILL not see it, WILL not know it—till

one day they start up suddenly, crying, ‘O God! O God! we have lost it!

Where is it?’ They do not understand that they could not carry the

laughing thing unchanged into the desert, and the frost, and the snow.

They do not know that what walks beside them still is the Joy grown older.

The grave, sweet, tender thing—warm in the coldest snows, brave in the

dreariest deserts—its name is Sympathy; it is the Perfect Love.”

 

South Africa.

 

II. THE HUNTER.

 

In certain valleys there was a hunter. Day by day he went to hunt for

wild-fowl in the woods; and it chanced that once he stood on the shores of

a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming of the

birds, a great shadow fell on him, and in the water he saw a reflection.

He looked up to the sky; but the thing was gone. Then a burning desire

came over him to see once again that reflection in the water, and all day

he watched and waited; but night came and it had not returned. Then he

went home with his empty bag, moody and silent. His comrades came

questioning about him to know the reason, but he answered them nothing; he

sat alone and brooded. Then his friend came to him, and to him he spoke.

 

“I have seen today,” he said, “that which I never saw before—a vast white

bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting blue. And

now it is as though a great fire burnt within my breast. It was but a

sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water; but now I desire nothing more

on earth than to hold her.”

 

His friend laughed.

 

“It was but a beam playing on the water, or the shadow of your own head.

Tomorrow you will forget her,” he said.

 

But tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow the hunter walked alone. He

sought in the forest and in the woods, by the lakes and among the rushes,

but he could not find her. He shot no more wild fowl; what were they to

him?

 

“What ails him?” said his comrades.

 

“He is mad,” said one.

 

“No; but he is worse,” said another; “he would see that which none of us

have seen, and make himself a wonder.”

 

“Come, let us forswear his company,” said all.

 

So the hunter walked alone.

 

One night, as he wandered in the shade, very heartsore and weeping, an old

man stood before him, grander and taller than the sons of men.

 

“Who are you?” asked the hunter.

 

“I am Wisdom,” answered the old man; “but some men call me Knowledge. All

my life I have grown in these valleys; but no man sees me till he has

sorrowed much. The eyes must be washed with tears that are to behold me;

and, according as a man has suffered, I speak.”

 

And the hunter cried:

 

“Oh, you who have lived here so long, tell me, what is that great wild bird

I have seen sailing in the blue? They would have me believe she is a

dream; the shadow of my own head.”

 

The old man smiled.

 

“Her name is Truth. He who has once seen her never rests again. Till

death he desires her.”

 

And the hunter cried:

 

“Oh, tell me where I may find her.”

 

But the old man said:

 

“You have not suffered enough,” and went.

 

Then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination, and wound

on it the thread of his Wishes; and all night he sat and wove a net.

 

In the morning he spread the golden net upon the ground, and into it he

threw a few grains of credulity, which his father had left him, and which

he kept in his breast-pocket. They were like white puff-balls, and when

you trod on them a brown dust flew out. Then he sat by to see what would

happen. The first that came into the net