Foreshadowing

“ A prophecy that depends for its fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy the brain or heart.
There are but few who do not long for a dawn beyond the night. And this longing is born of, and nourished by, the heart. Love wrapped in shadow—bending with tear-filled eyes above its dead, convulsively clasps the outstretched hand of hope. ”

“ If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.'
'No, no,' said Scrooge. 'Oh no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.' [Pg 90]
'If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future none other of my race,' returned the Ghost, 'will find him here. ”

“ But death of horror is despoiled,
When Heaven shines forth beyond the tomb.
For ever gone! oh, dreadful fate!
Go visit nature—gather thence
The symbols of man's happier state,
Which speak to every mortal sense. ”

“ In dreams, time and space are annihilated, and two severed lovers may be made happy. In dreams, amidst a grotesque confusion of things remembered and things forgot, we see the events of the past (I have been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy) ; we are present in places remote; we behold the absent; we converse with the dead, and we may even (let us say by chance coincidence) forecast the future. All these things, except the last, are familiar to everybody who dreams. ”

“ As to the epilogue, it is spoken to get rid of the idea of the tragedy altogether, and to ward off the fury of the pit, who may be bent on its damnation. The greatest incongruity you can hit upon is, therefore, the most proper for this purpose. But I deny that the hero of a tragedy, or the principal character in it, is ever pitched upon to deliver the prologue. It is always, by prescription, some walking shadow, some poor player, who cannot even spoil a part of any consequence. ”

“ These very mirages are the unthinkable and incalculable congeries of appearances that crowd in upon you and form you out of the past, and that sweep you on into dissemination into other unthinkable and incalculable congeries of appearances to people the ghost land of the future. Life is apparitional, and passes. ”

“ The ghost had vanished, and the voice of the whispering devil was also mute. My contentment, indeed, lasted but for a brief interval, till I was called on again to make up and deliver an ornament of equal value; but, by this very relief and composure of spirit, under circumstances which would have rendered any one else anxious and miserable, I recognized at once the fate that awaited me. ”

“ EPILOGUE.
BY MR SMITH.
Our poet, gentlemen, thought to steal away,
Hoping those wretched rhymes, i' th' end o' th' play,
Might serve for epilogue; for truly he
Takes epilogues for arrant bribery.
H' observes your poet in our modern plays,
Humbly showeth, and then as humbly prays;
So that it can't be said, what they have writ
Was without fear, though often without wit.
He trusts (as ye say papists do) to merit;
Leaves you (like quakers) to be mov'd by th' spirit.
But since that epilogues are so much in vogue,
Take this as prologue to the epilogue. ”

“ Low spake the voice within his head,
In words imagined more than said,
Soundless as ghost's intended tread:
"If thou art duller than before,
Why quittedst thou the voice of lore?
Why not endure, expecting more?" ”

“ And yet we believe that there is an answer, and that upon a time a new Dawn will come blushing down the ways of our enduring night. We believe it, for its reflected beauty even now shines up continually in our hearts from beneath the horizon of the grave, and we call it Hope. ”

“ In a beautiful passage, Timon compares death to initiation into the Great Mysteries—an initiation in which gloom and weariness and perplexity and terror are followed by the shining of a wondrous light, which beams on lovely meadows, whose atmosphere resounds with sacred voices that tell us all the secret of the mystery, and whose paths are trod by pure and holy men. ”

“ Another great convenience will be found in my system; apparitions may be evoked, in open day,—at noon, if the case should be urgent, in the midst of a field, on the surface of water, or in the glare of a patent-lamp, quite as easily, as in the ‘darkness of chaos or old night.’ Nay, a person rightly prepared may see ghosts, while seated comfortably by his library-fire, in as much perfection, as amidst broken tombs, nodding ruins, and awe-inspiring ivy. ”

“ So darkness drops between the days, an interlude
When night's low sighing stirs the sleepy solitude.
So, when the little cycle of this life is rounded,
Before the spirit enters into life unbounded,
It waits to hear, with bated breath,
The solemn interlude of death. ”

“ On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn.
Kingdoms abased, and Thrones that starward yearn,
All are but ghouls that batten on the past.
Monstrous and dread, must it forever abide
This inescapable alternity?
Must beauty blossom, rooted in decay,
And night devour its flaming hues alway?
Sickening, will Life not turn eventually,
Or ravenous Death at last be satisfied? ”

“ That is the thing—the Past, the more or less remote Past, of which the prose is clean obliterated by distance—that is the place to get our ghosts from. Indeed we live ourselves, we educated folk of modern times, on the borderland of the Past, in houses looking down on its troubadours' orchards and Greek folks' pillared courtyards; and a legion of ghosts, very vague and changeful, are perpetually to and fro, fetching and carrying for us between it and the Present. ”

“ The Sorrowful Mysteries set before our minds the Incarnate Word agonizing in the Garden of Olives for love of us, undergoing an inhuman scourging in Pilate’s hall, wearing a thorny crown of ignominy, laden with a heavy cross, and finally sacrificing His life, in supreme anguish, on Calvary for our redemption. In the Glorious Mysteries we consider Christ’s triumphant resurrection and ascension, the coming of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and the assumption and coronation of the Virgin Mother. ”

“ By reflecting on the past and comparing it with the present, we prophesy of the future and often our prophecies are confirmed. By day we prophesy of the night, and the night comes; at night we prophesy of the morning, and the morning comes. ”

“ But the most dignified shape that prophecy has taken in modern times is, unquestionably, the second sight. It takes its seeming from the wild country which gave it birth, where the grey mists clothing forest and mountain, so often delude the eye with unreal shapes. Without positive insanity, we know how the imagination may be worked upon to hold each strange tale devoutly true; and could a person once be sufficiently excited to believe that he possessed such a power, it would not long want confirmation strong as holy writ. ”

“ I pray that death instead of shame may be the portion of the next generation, and I look at George's boys only to wonder which of them is the happy one who shall some day lie dead at his brother's feet. Are you surprised at my resolution never to marry? The fatal prophecy is rich in its fulfillment; none of our name and blood are safe; and the day might come when I too should have to call upon my children to curse me for their birth,—should have to watch while the burden which I could no longer bear alone pressed the life from their mother's heart. ”

“ The near approach of death--the plunge, as it were, into the jaws of the grave, from which she had been rescued as by a miracle--had seemed to waken in her new sensations towards all the warm relationships of life, a clinging to her kindred beings of the world, a tenderer, a nearer affection for the thrilling ties of human life. ”

“ Whether in dialogue or in monologue, 'The Revenger's Tragedy' is so equally admirable for instinctive obedience to nature and imaginative magnificence of inspiration, so equally perfect in the passionate harmony of its verse and the inspired accuracy of its locution, that years of study and elaboration might have seemed necessary to bring about this inexpressible improvement in expression of yet more sombre and more fiery thought or feeling. ”

“ When Fate selects her human agents, her dark and mysterious spirit is at work within them; she moulds their hearts, she exalts their energies, she shapes them to the part she has allotted them, and renders the mortal instrument worthy of the solemn end. ”

“ Brougham, Oct. 16, 1862.—I have just been copying out from my journal the account of this strange dream, certissima mortis imago. Soon after my return there arrived a letter from India announcing G——'s death, and stating that he died on the 19th of December! Singular coincidence! Yet when one reflects on the vast number of dreams which night after night pass through our brains, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect. ”

“ It recalls unpleasant memories of the past, it awakens dismal forebodings concerning the future, it shadows the present with a mantle of gloom, and it tinges every thought and recollection with a touch of involuntary superstition. ”

“ The amplifications of the Scripture narrative are often conceived with high poetic insight, and this “Dream of the World’s Tragedy” is, despite some trifling incongruities, a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax of the inspired narrative.’—Dublin Review. ”

“ Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the heart a tomb,
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,
And with ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain. ”

“ Behind her lay the first story, a rampart, of achievement and promise, and ahead, calling her on, the one that was yet to be attempted, difficult and strange, a little thread of story upon a background of dark thoughts, like a voice heard through a storm. Even the heaviest parts of the afternoon could be used, in an engrossed forgetfulness of time and place. ”

“ The fulfilment of the word of prophecy in history is a fascinating story. To the Lord, the future is an open book, even as the present. The word is spoken, telling of the event to come; it is written on the parchment scroll by the prophet's pen. Time passes; centuries come and go. Then, when the hour of the prophecy arrives, lo, there appears the fulfilment. ”

“ We know that all things change, they do not die.{101}
Wherever man may roam,
Thy presence, viewless as the Summer air,
Meets him abroad, or in his peaceful home,
And when Death calls him forth, thou, too, art there.
Thou art where soul meets soul,
Or where earth’s noblest fall in battle strife;
But Death, the Spoiler, yields to thy control;
Forevermore thou art the conqueror, Life.
Leaves have their glad recall,
And blossoms open to the South wind’s breath,
And stars that set shall rise again, for all,
All things shall triumph o’er the Spoiler—Death. ”

“ There has been the hope that by going back to our nurse’s or our mother’s knee we may find the secret of human destinies. But above and beyond this folk-lore appeals to all that which goes to make romance: the myth, the saga, the legend, combine with the mysterious lore of the unseen which lies at the root of what we term superstition. ”

“ Once to have exercised this sense-freed perception is to realize that the gift of prophecy, although the subject of such frequent marvel, is no longer mysterious. The merest glance of our sensitive and uncloyed vision can detect the strength of the relation between two beings, and therefore instantly calculate its duration. If you see a heavy weight suspended from a slender string, you can know, without any wizardry, that in a few moments the string will snap; well, such, if you admit the analogy, is prophecy, is foreknowledge. And it was thus that I saw it with Theresa and Allan. ”

“ She had forgotten that night until lately—forgotten her tears, her doubts, her hesitation; but, as at the day of judgment the scroll of our lives will be unfolded before us, so even in this world there are times when part of the history is remembered by us, when the thoughts and the resolutions of the long ago, appear before us like unwelcome ghosts. ”

“ The fact answers to this presumption. Prophecies of very remote events, remote, I mean, from the date of the prediction, are universally the most obscure. As the season advanced for their accomplishment, they are rendered more clear: either fresh prophecies are given, to point out the time, and other circumstances, more determinately; or the completion of some prophecies affords new light for the interpretation of others, that are unfulfilled. ”

“ I seemed to hear the heavy resounding bell of time, tolling mournfully the dying year, whilst angels with covered faces, and forms that bent with sorrow, waited to receive the finishing scroll of the world’s existence, that the fearful record guarded in darkness and silence might at last be unrolled in the terrible light of eternity! ”

“ And they depart, and come no more,
Or come as phantoms and as ghosts.
Above the darksome sea of death
Looms the great life that is to be,
A land of cloud and mystery,
A dim mirage, with shapes of men
Long dead, and passed beyond our ken. ”

“ A ghost comes from Purgatory to impart a secret out of the reach of its hearer—who presently meditates on the question whether the sleep of death is dreamless. Accidents once or twice remind us strangely of the words, ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.’ More important are other impressions. ”

“ This is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable and best-authenticated recent cases of Spectral Appearances which has ever been narrated. The various independent testimonies dove-tailing together so perfectly, centre in the leading supernatural fact—the actual apparition in the daytime of a person just departed this life by sudden death, seen not by one only, but by two people, simultaneously; and seen in company with the spirit of a very holy and renowned saint, the chosen patron of the youth who had just been drowned. ”