1
" And turn no whither, but must needs decay And drop from out the universal frame Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss, That utter nothingness, of which I came: This is it that has come to pass in me; Oh, horror! this it is, my dearest, this; So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray. "
― John Henry Newman , The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work (Spirituality of St. John Henry Newman Book 1)
6
" I can no more; for now it comes again, That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain, That masterful negation and collapse Of all that makes me man; as though I bent Over the dizzy brink Of some sheer infinite descent; Or worse, as though Down, down for ever I was falling through The solid framework of created things, And needs must sink and sink Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still, A fierce and restless fright begins to fill The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse, Some bodily form of ill Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps Its hideous wings, And makes me wild with horror and dismay. "
― John Henry Newman , The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work (Spirituality of St. John Henry Newman Book 1)
13
" O Lord, how wonderful in depth and height, But most in man, how wonderful Thou art! With what a love, what soft persuasive might Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart, Thy tale complete of saints Thou dost provide, To fill the thrones which angels lost through pride! He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground, Polluted in the blood of his first sire, With his whole essence shatter'd and unsound, And coil'd around his heart a demon dire, Which was not of his nature, but had skill To bind and form his op'ning mind to ill. Then was I sent from heaven to set right The balance in his soul of truth and sin, And I have waged a long relentless fight, Resolved that death-environ'd spirit to win, Which from its fallen state, when all was lost, Had been repurchased at so dread a cost. "
― John Henry Newman , The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work (Spirituality of St. John Henry Newman Book 1)