Hollowness

“ One day the reaction inevitably comes, and then the awakening is terrible, disastrous. At times, when, in company of others, she was laughing loudly and appearing to be thoroughly enjoying herself, she would suddenly become serious, talk no more, and go away in the corner by herself. Her companions teased her about it, and called such symptoms "Laura's tantrums." The truth was that each day the girl realized more the hollowness and rottenness of the life she was leading. ”

“ STRUGGLING IN THE WORLD.
Do you know where it is -- the Hollow Land?
I have been looking for it now so long, trying to find it again the Hollow Land for there I saw my love first.
I wish to tell you how I found it first of all; but I am old, my memory fails me: you must wait and let me think if I perchance can tell you how it happened. Yea, in my ears is a confused noise of trumpet-blasts singing over desolate moors, in my ears and eyes a clashing and clanging of horse-hoofs, a ringing and glittering of steel; drawn-back lips, set teeth, shouts, shrieks, and curses. ”

“ I thought of the awful thing of plunging a fellow creature from the top of a cliff into the dark and misty void below—of his being dashed to pieces on the protruding rocks, and of hearing his shrieks as he descended the cloud, and beheld the shagged points on which he was to alight. Then I thought of plunging a soul so abruptly into Hell, or, at the best, sending it to hover on the confines of that burning abyss—of its appearance at the bar of the Almighty to receive its sentence. ”

“ Lives passed in turmoil, in making one another unhappy; in bitterest misunderstanding of our brothers' hearts, making those sad whom God has not made sad, alas, alas! What chance for any of us to find the Hollow Land? What time even to look for it?
Yet who has not dreamed of it? Who, half miserable yet the while, for that he knows it is but a dream, has not felt the cool waves round his feet, the roses crowning him, and through the leaves of beech and lime the many whispering winds of the Hollow Land?
Now, my name was Florian, and my house was the house of the Lilies ”

“ Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. ”

“ Give me the word in time that triumphs there.
I too must go into the dreadful hollow,
Where all our human laughter stops—and hark!
The tiny stuffless voices of the dark
Have called me, called me till I needs must follow. ”

“ With the exception of this pencil of light, our hollow is filled with a cool, clare-obscure tint, like sunshine robbed of its glare—or like sunshine and moonlight mingled together—or, on the whole, like the rich harvest moonlight, with a dash of green in it. ”

“ Cold and darkness arise always in this world from the want of spiritual heat and light, which are love and wisdom.
“Here we take our adieu,” he continued, in a tone which revealed a touch of sadness. “That great light just rising in the east and south indicates the approach of the Lord with all his hosts of ministering angels and spirits. His presence will disperse the demons of darkness, who have so long sat like ghouls upon the hearts of myriads of feeble and helpless beings.
“Ah! how the love and faith of the Church in heaven have watched over these dead souls! ”

“ The mountain trembled with fear at the angry words of the Great Spirit. "O father of all fire and light," cried the Fire Spirit, "I know that the flames have been cruel. They killed the beautiful flowers and drove your children from their homes, but for many, many moons they heeded my words and were good and gentle. They drove the [Pg 8] frost and cold of winter from the wigwams of the village. The little children laughed to see their red light in the sky. The hearts of your people will be sad, if the flames must perish from the earth." ”

“ A rich, dark hollow of earth, circled by a darker if not richer rim of earth, five to eight miles across, a piece of landscape held in the hollow of your eye, if not the hollow of your hand, made a gem in centre and setting, such as one rarely sees, especially when the flashing Southern sun, pouring through a brisk and stimulating atmosphere, in this rare ether over eight thousand feet above the sea, made the gem yet more radiant and transparent. I well-nigh envied the governor his spot, robbers and pulqui included. ”

“ These poor souls in hell cannot be visited by the light of heaven. Its accompanying heat would torture them by being turned into intense cold, and its light would not be seen by them at all, but would obliterate what little light of their own they were enjoying in their sad, painful, pitiable way. ”

“ And to you I come now with this message: every wrong thing that you do, great or small, will be like some of those hollow images of the gods that one hears of in barbarian temples—looked at in front, fair, but when you get behind them you find a hollow, full of dust and spiders' webs and unclean things. ”

“ I tell thee that all alike shall pass save the darkness and the void into which all, both seen and unseen shall be swallowed up. Yes, in this very valley where we now stand, you shall see iniquity triumph and all your feeble prayers be brought to naught. ”

“ Set, god of darkness, scaly lord of the shadows, by the blood of a virgin and the sevenfold symbol I call to your sons below the black earth! Children of the deeps, below the red earth, under the black earth, awaken and shake your awful manes! ”

“ He has clothed Himself with clouds and come down to us—to men on the earth. As the sun clothes his consuming rays with an atmosphere of vapor, which moderates them and accommodates them to the states of man and beast, so has God clothed himself in a finite human form and thus come down to his creatures. ”

“ Would waken my heart from the silent sleep of years.
But loveless, lonely dreamer, who will not be comforted;
Of what avail is it to murmur, to moan, or to cry;
The peacefulest rest, I think, is the sleep of the dead,
When the day is past, and the darkness is over the sky. ”

“ The hells appear, some like dens and caverns, some like great chasms and whirlpools, some like bogs and others like lakes of water. They are not opened except when evil spirits (once men) from the world of spirits are cast in thither. When they are opened, there is an exhalation from them, either like that of fire and smoke, such as appears in the air from buildings on fire, or like mists and thick clouds. I have been told that the infernal spirits neither see those things nor are sensible of them, because they are in their own atmosphere and thus in the delight of their own life. ”

“ How great the number is of the hells I have been permitted to realize from knowing that there are hells under every mountain, hill, and rock, and likewise under every plain and valley, and that they stretch out beneath these in length and in breadth and in depth. In a word, the entire heaven and the entire world of spirits are, as it were, excavated beneath, and under them is a continuous hell. ”

“ It is a law of the spiritual world, that is, of both the heavens and the hells, that the internals and externals should be in correspondence with each other. But as this is not the case in this world, and but few are prepared, on entering the spiritual world, to come immediately into such a state, a season is passed in the world of spirits, which is neither heaven nor hell, but intermediate between the two. ”

“ Oh, if it be that our souls are for [98] ever banished from that Paradise which they have so often revelled in together! What have we further to look forward to but those earthly joys known to the most grovelling mortal? This is a melancholy prospect, my Edith, for us who remember (however, indistinctly—from the growth of that clay—over thy spirit perchance, as well as my own) those divine joys we experienced together when our spirits walked untrammelled from our bonds of clay and our souls melted into the harmony of those spheres which are their proper element. ”

“ Ere visions have been chilled to truth,
And hopes are washed away in tears.
Go,—for I will not bid thee weep,—
Too soon my sorrows will be thine,
And evening's troubled air shall sweep
The incense from the broken shrine.
If Heaven can hear the dying tone
Of chords that soon will cease to thrill,
The prayer that Heaven has heard alone
May bless thee when those chords are still. ”

“ I came to a hollow where there was a wonderful greenness over everything, and I said to myself that I would be bewitched at last. I would dance and whirl and call till, perhaps, some kind of a creature as wild and wicked and wonderful as I, would come out of the woods and join me. So I forgot about the fresh linen frock, and wreathed myself with wild grape-vine; I cared nothing for my fresh braids and wound trillium in my hair; and I ceased to remember my new shoes, and whirled around and around in the leafy mould, singing and shouting. ”

“ Then when the sky was raised far above the earth and no longer touched even the peaks, a great change came over the earth. She, too, had thought the Shining One unkind, and she had said, "Shining One, it was only a dream. Why should you change the sky and the earth? ”

“ The hollower they are they ring the more. Here shall no holly cast a spiny shade, Nor mistletoe my solitude invade, No trinket-laden vegetable come, No jorum steam with Sheolate of rum. No shrilling children shall their voices rear. ”

“ For instance, at full speed across a meadow, a hollow would suddenly present itself, and to an accustomed eye the moonlight might enable it to be distinguished at a glance what it was, while to one wholly unaccustomed to it, the hollow would often look like a hillock by such a light. ”

“ When I feel my back, which is still sore from the last beating I got, when I hear myself speak, when I stick my tongue in my hollow tooth, I think it is myself. But when I look at my nightcap, my shirt, and all the splendor before my eyes, when I hear the delicious music, then the devil split me if I can get it through my head that it is myself. ”

“ Then, and only then, was the Spirit of God, the Paraclete, sent down and diffused in the hearts of men. As the moisture must first ascend heavenward before the refreshing showers descend, so, not until after the Ascension of Our Lord, could the Holy Ghost come to renew the face of the earth. ”

“ The shadow flung from the soul is an omen; and mine at this very time holds some mysterious communion with its fate. There are some whose web in life has a dark yarn even from the first—dark and brief—a gloomy river, with a short and troubled course. ”

“ In some I see grand pictures, and note the incense floating up toward the Heavens; in some I see high vaulted roofs, and the light in many glowing colors falls on the bowed forms of the worshippers. I hear holy words, the voice of prayer, but I see no crosses borne, and all are rich and grand. I go down in the low places. I see the poor toiling on unpitied and uncared for. ”

“ To one of two mansions the soul is destined to depart, after its separation from the body, to heaven or hell; to the halls of eternal bliss, where God and His holy angels dwell, or to the place of endless misery, inhabited by Satan and his grisly companions. My friend, if the joys of heaven are great, unutterably great, so are the torments of hell unutterably so. ”

“ Each soul, therefore, is responsible for its heaven or its hell. Its own organic structure, its own emotional and intellectual states determine where and with whom and how it shall live for ever. No arbitrary or judicial decree lifts it to heaven or dooms it to hell. We determine the final forms of our inner universe of affection and thought by our own life and conduct upon earth, and those forms of our spiritual nature determine our external surroundings to eternity. ”

“ Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils! ”

“ Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace,
That gave my soul a Hiding Place!
Against the God who built the sky,
I fought with hands uplifted high,
Despised the mention of His grace,
Too proud to seek a Hiding Place. ”

“ It is day or night to the spirit, cold or warm, summer or winter, not according to the relationships existing between a rotating earth and a central sun, but according to the state of the soul or frame of the mind, and a greater or less receptivity of the love and wisdom which are the heat and light of the spiritual world. That love and wisdom enter the mind by an interior way, and are made apparent to the perceptive faculties as heat or light in the external sphere. ”

“ When the stones were made and the Great Spirit looked upon their beauty, he said, "I will not hide you all away in the seams of the rocks. Some of you shall be out in the sunshine, so that the little children who cannot go to the mountains shall see your colors." ”

“ Can one who has seen a home be happy in a hovel? Ranke, the historian, says, "More guiltless and more powerful, more exalted and more holy, has naught ever been on earth than his conduct, his life, and his death. ”

“ The sphere of life radiates from a spirit like heat from the sun, or like perfume from a flower. It flows forth and falls into successive zones or belts of spiritual substance, in each of which it produces some spiritual form representative of itself. ”

“ And no less blessed are the souls that come now: but for us, the wells are so numerous and so pure, that we too often pass them by, and go on our way thirsting. Strange blindness!—yet not strange: for until the Angel of the Lord shall open the eyes of Hagar, she must needs go mourning through the wilderness, not seeing the well. ”