Uncloistered

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  “She gazed ahead through a long reach of future days strung together like pearls in a rosary, every one like the others, and all smooth and flawless and innocent, and her heart went up in thankfulness. Outside was the fervid summer afternoon; the air was filled with the sounds of the busy harvest of men and birds and bees; there were halloos, metallic clatterings, sweet calls, and long hummings. Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an uncloistered nun.” A New England Nun By Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930)

To What New Suffering Am I Shifted?

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“Who from the accursed regions of the dead haleth me forth, snatching at food which ever fleeth from my hungry lips? What god for his undoing showeth again to Tantalus the abodes of the living? Hath something worse been found than parching thirst midst water, worse than ever-gaping hunger? Cometh the slippery stone of Sisyphus to be borne upon my shoulders? or the wheel stretching apart my limbs in its swift round? or Tityus’ pangs, who, stretched in a huge cavern, with torn out vitals feeds the dusky birds and, by night renewing whate’er he lost by day, lies an undiminished banquet for new monsters? To what new suffering am I shifted?”  (The Ghost of Tantalus, from Seneca’s play, “Thyestes”)

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