Will it be always so? Whether we hate and doubt, or whether we believe and
love, to our dearest, are we to seem always wicked?
We do not yet know that in the soul's search for truth the bitterness lies
here, the striving cannot always hide itself among the thoughts; sooner or
later it will clothe itself in outward action; then it steps in and divides
between the soul and what it loves. All things on earth have their price;
and for truth we pay the dearest. We barter it for love and sympathy. The
road to honour is paved with thorns; but on the path to truth, at every
step you set your foot down on your own heart.
VI.
Then at last a new time--the time of waking; short, sharp, and not
pleasant, as wakings often are.
Sleep and dreams exist on this condition--that no one wake the dreamer.
And now life takes us up between her finger and thumb, shakes us furiously,
till our poor nodding head is well-nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she
sets us down a little hard on the bare earth, bruised and sore, but
preternaturally wide awake.
We have said in our days of dreaming, "Injustice and wrong are a seeming;
pain is a shadow. Our God, He is real, He who made all things, and He only
is Love."
Now life takes us by the neck and shows us a few other things,--new-made
graves with the red sand flying about them; eyes that we love with the
worms eating them; evil men walking sleek and fat, the whole terrible
hurly-burly of the thing called life,--and she says, "What do you think of
these?" We dare not say "Nothing.
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