“The World’s Great Age begins anew, The Golden Years return, The Earth doth like a Snake renew Her Winter Skin outworn: Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream.”...

I saw a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and writing. He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the tall window on his left one perceived only distances,...

I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. Long ago in my...

I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. Long ago in my...

I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. Long ago in my...

Parload stood at the open window, opera-glass in hand, and sought and found and was uncertain about and lost again, the new comet. I thought the comet no more than a nuisance then because I wanted to ...

That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me. “It’s a bad time to change just now,” he said after a little pause. Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone. But with Parload I fel...

Always with Parload I was chief talker. I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another being, with scarce anything in co...

It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own home. Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near the Clayton parish church. Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, lodged ...

I cannot now remember (the story resumed), what interval separated that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet⁠—I think I only pretended to see it then⁠—and the Sunday afternoon I spent at...

I cannot now remember (the story resumed), what interval separated that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet⁠—I think I only pretended to see it then⁠—and the Sunday afternoon I spent at...

I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined the affair was over forever⁠—“I’ve done with women,” I said to Parload⁠—and then there was silence for more than a week. Before that w...

I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of dismay for me. I could recollect, I believe, every significant word s...

When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and she⁠—her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was stil...

For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand fo...

I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to d...

There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely divergent things, that stands out with the intensest vividness. As I went across the last open meadow, following the shortcut to Checkshill st...

“That comet is going to hit the earth!” So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. “Ah!” said the other man. “They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We shan’t blow up...

“That comet is going to hit the earth!” So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. “Ah!” said the other man. “They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We shan’t blow up...

As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest⁠—for my shilling and a penny only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill⁠—I remember very vividly a...

It was three days after this⁠—on Wednesday, that is to say⁠—that the first of those sinister outbreaks occurred that ended in the bloody affair of Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire line...

In the night, fever, pain, fatigue⁠—it may be the indigestion of my supper of bread and cheese⁠—roused me at last out of a hag-rid sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and shame...

You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked over to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a great confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head, scene...

Old Stuart was pitiful. I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen him. He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then stared hard again at the flowerpots before ...

It was old Mrs. Verrall. I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little old lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features were pursed up into an assumption of ...

From that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of the world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging rebe...

From that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of the world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging rebe...

I awoke in that state of equanimity that so often follows an emotional drenching. It was late, and my mother was beside my bed. She had some breakfast for me on a battered tray. “Don’t get up yet, dea...

After our midday dinner⁠—it was a potato-pie, mostly potato with some scraps of cabbage and bacon⁠—I put on my overcoat and got it out of the house while my mother was in the scullery at the back. A s...

“I must be going,” I said, with a curiously reinforced desire to get away out of that room. “My dear chap!” he insisted, “I can’t think of it. Surely⁠—there’s nothing to call you away.” Then with an e...

A happy accident relieved Mr. Gabbitas from the embarrassment of that challenge, and carried me another step along my course of personal disaster. It came on the heels of my question in the form of a ...

I missed the train. Partly that was because the curate’s clock was slow, and partly it was due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would try on another pair after I had declared my time ...

As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality of ordina...

As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality of ordina...

Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The who...

I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing to find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall and Ne...

Two people were bathing in the sea. I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and the blue band of clear sky was no wider than before. These people must have come into sight as I fe...

I came up over the little ridge and discovered the bungalow village I had been seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A door slammed, the two runners had vanished, and I halted staring. There w...

I halted, and stood planning what I had to do. Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I sought answered to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened! Should I wait where I was⁠—...

I seemed to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies that glowed against a glo...

I seemed to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies that glowed against a glo...

I seemed to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies that glowed against a glo...

It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there were many surprises in store for me. How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding. After all it had come to me...

Everywhere the awakening came with the sunrise. We awakened to the gladness of the morning; we walked dazzled in a light that was joy. Everywhere that was so. It was always morning. It was morning bec...

The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter, and then the tears. Only after some time did I come upon another man. Until I heard his voice calling I did not seem to feel there we...

That memory stands out against the dark past of the world with extraordinary clearness and brightness. The air, I remember, was full of the calling and piping and singing of birds. I have a curious pe...

His bungalow beyond the golf links was, perhaps, a mile and a quarter from the lane. We went down to the beach margin and along the pallid wave-smoothed sands, and we got along by making a swaying, ho...

So the great Day came to me. And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world awoke. For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the same tide of insensibility; in an hou...

So the great Day came to me. And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world awoke. For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the same tide of insensibility; in an hou...

My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles of the world, to the wild life that shared man’s suspension, and I think of a thousand feral acts interrupted and truncated⁠—as it were froze...

Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composing of the copy of the New Paper that lies before me now. It was the first newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change...

Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a certain prosaic person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed through the Change. I heard this man’s story in the post-office at Men...

The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of the Change. I remember how one day she confessed herself. She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took the reports of the falli...

With the dawn that awakening went about the earth. I have told how it came to me, and how I walked in wonder through the transfigured cornfields of Shaphambury. It came to everyone. Near me, and for t...

Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears. Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit and exalted, capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible, incapable of doing w...

One irrelevant memory comes back to me, irrelevant, and yet by some subtle trick of quality it summarizes the Change for me. It is the memory of a woman’s very beautiful face, a woman with a flushed f...

And what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at which I was present, the council that was held two days later in Melmount’s bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the ...

And what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at which I was present, the council that was held two days later in Melmount’s bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the ...

I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, the absence of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the broad principles of our present state. These men had lived hithert...

“Let us begin afresh!” This piece of obvious common sense seemed then to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart went out to him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as it w...

So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in relation to the general framework of human life, its effect ...

So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in relation to the general framework of human life, its effect ...

So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in relation to the general framework of human life, its effect ...

The talk we three had together in the dawn of the new time is very strongly impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh and simple about it, something young and flushed and exalted. We took up...

This old newspaper, this first reissue of the New Paper, desiccated last relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece of identification the superstitious of the old days⁠—those queer religionists...

“What are we to do?” asked Verrall. Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its calyx and remove, one by one, it...

Suddenly I looked up. Nettie had come back and stood looking down at me. “Since we talked I have been thinking,” she said. “Edward has let me come to you alone. And I feel perhaps I can talk better to...

I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost vouch for the words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes a blank. I have a dim memory of being back in the house near the Link...

Next day I came home to Clayton. The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, toilsome youth, embittered adoles...

Next day I came home to Clayton. The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, toilsome youth, embittered adoles...

Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this world that had been renewed. I did not know how short that time would be, but the little I could do⁠—perhaps after all it was not litt...

That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. It used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day’s work ...

When presently that illness, that fading weakness that made an euthanasia for so many of the older people in the beginning of the new time, took hold upon my mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter...

In the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as a shock to me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. The doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects of ...

In the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as a shock to me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. The doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects of ...

I remember that first Beltane festival as the most terribly lonely night in my life. It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of intense feeling with forgotten gaps between. I recall very distinct...

I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched; exhausted by my fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no thought of what lay before me. A miserable attraction drew me into the great house to ...

It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly out of my mind at the touch of Anna’s lips. I loved Anna. We went to the council of our group⁠—commune it was then called⁠—and she wa...

This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and the high ...