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stoutfellowI'd like to offer another of my favorite passages from novels that I've read, this time from Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country - one of the most lyrical novels I know of. There are several bits from it that move me greatly, and this is one of them.
The context: the story is set in South Africa, in the days just before the full rigors of the apartheid regime were imposed. A group of characters, most of them black Anglican clergy, have gathered at a mission house. Word has just arrived of the murder of Mr. Arthur Jarvis, described as "a courageous young man, and a great fighter for justice".
The context: the story is set in South Africa, in the days just before the full rigors of the apartheid regime were imposed. A group of characters, most of them black Anglican clergy, have gathered at a mission house. Word has just arrived of the murder of Mr. Arthur Jarvis, described as "a courageous young man, and a great fighter for justice".
There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens the pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Ay, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.
