MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT - by Mark Twain

As I understand it, what you desire is information about 'my first lie, and how I got out of it.' I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my memory is not as good as it was. If you had asked about my first truth it would have been easier for me and kinder of you, for I remember that fairly well. I remember it as if it were last week. The family think it was week before, but that is flattery and probably has a selfish project back of it. When a person has become seasoned by experience and has reached the age of sixty-four, which is the age of discretion, he likes a family compliment as well as ever, but he does not lose his head over it as in the old innocent days.

I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides.

It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin, advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have done it; George Washington did it, anybody would have done it. During the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise above that temptation and keep from telling that lie. Up to 1867 all the civilised children that were ever born into the world were liars, including George. Then the safety pin came in and blocked the game. But is that reform worth anything? No; for it is reform by force and has no virtue in it; it merely stops that form of lying, it doesn't impair the disposition to lie, by a shade. It is the cradle application of conversion by fire and sword, or of the temperance principle through prohibition.

To return to that early lie. They found no pin and they realised that another liar had been added to the world's supply. For by grace of a rare inspiration a quite commonplace but seldom noticed fact was borne in upon their understandings, that almost all lies are acts, and speech has no part in them. Then, if they examined a little further they recognised that all people are liars from the cradle onwards, without exception, and that they begin to lie as soon as they wake in the morning, and keep it up without rest or refreshment until they go to sleep at night. If they arrived at that truth it probably grieved them, did, if they had been heedlessly and ignorantly educated by their books and teachers; for why should a person grieve over a thing which by the eternal law of his make he cannot help? He didn't invent the law; it is merely his business to obey it and keep still; join the universal conspiracy and keep so still that he shall deceive his fellow-conspirators into imagining that he doesn't know that the law exists. It is what we all do, we that know. I am speaking of the lie of silent assertion; we can tell it without saying a word, and we all do it, we that know. In the magnitude of its territorial spread it is one of the most majestic lies that the civilisations make it their sacred and anxious care to guard and watch and propagate.

For instance. It would not be possible for a humane and intelligent person to invent a rational excuse for slavery; yet you will remember that in the early days of the emancipation agitation in the North the agitators got but small help or countenance from any one. Argue and plead and pray as they might, they could not break the universal stillness that reigned, from pulpit and press all the way down to the bottom of society, the clammy stillness created and maintained by the lie of silent assertion, the silent assertion that there wasn't anything going on in which humane and intelligent people were interested.

From the beginning of the Dreyfus case to the end of it all France, except a couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under the smother of the silent-assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and unoffending man. The like smother was over England lately, a good half of the population silently letting on that they were not aware that Mr. Chamberlain was trying to manufacture a war in South Africa and was willing to pay fancy prices for the materials.

Now there we have instances of three prominent ostensible civilisations working the silent-assertion lie. Could one find other instances in the three countries ? I think so. Not so very many perhaps, but say a billion, just so as to keep within bounds. Are those countries working that kind of lie, day in and day out, in thousands and thousands of varieties, without ever resting ? Yes, we know that to be true. The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies ? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business, the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop.

What I am arriving at is this: When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals ? Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little lying on our own account? Why shouldn't we be honest and honourable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of our mouth.

Here in England they have the oddest ways. They won't tell a spoken lie, nothing can persuade them. Except in a large moral interest, like politics or religion, I mean. To tell a spoken lie to get even the poorest little personal advantage out of it is a thing which is impossible to them. They make me ashamed of myself sometimes, they are so bigoted. They will not even tell a lie for the fun of it; they will not tell it when it hasn't even a suggestion of damage or advantage in it for any one. This has a restraining influence upon me in spite of reason, and I am always getting out of practice.

Of course, they tell all sorts of little unspoken lies, just like anybody; but they don't notice it until their attention is called to it. They have got me so that sometimes I never tell a verbal lie now except in a modified form; and even in the modified form they don't approve of it. Still, that is as far as I can go in the interest of the growing friendly relations between the two countries; I must keep some of my self-respect, and my health. I can live on a pretty low diet, but I can't get along on no sustenance at all.

Of course, there are times when these people have to come out with a spoken lie, for that is a thing which happens to everybody once in a while, and would happen to the angels if they came down here much. Particularly to the angels, in fact, for the lies I speak of are self-sacrificing ones told for a generous object, not a mean one; but even when these people tell a lie of that sort it seems to scare them and unsettle their minds. It is a wonderful thing to see, and shows that they are all insane. In fact, it is a country which is full of the most interesting superstitions.

I have an English friend of twenty-five years' standing, and yesterday when we were coming down-town on top of the 'bus I happened to tell him a lie, a modified one, of course; a half-breed, a mulatto; I can't seem to tell any other kind now, the market is so flat. I was explaining to him how I got out of an embarrassment in Austria last year. I do not know what might have become of me if I hadn't happened to remember to tell the police that I belonged to the same family as the Prince of Wales. That made everything pleasant and they let me go; and apologised, too, and were ever so kind and obliging and polite, and couldn't do too much for me, and explained how the mistake came to be made, and promised to hang the officer that did it, and hoped I would let bygones be bygones and not say anything about it; and I said they could depend on me. My friend said, austerely:

'You call it a modified lie? Where is the modification?'

I explained that it lay in the form of my statement to the police. 'I didn't say I belonged to the Royal Family; I only said I belonged to the same family as the Prince, meaning the human family, of course; and if those people had had any penetration they would have known it. I can't go around furnishing brains to the police; it is not to be expected.'

'How did you feel after that performance?'

'Well, of course I was distressed to find that the police had misunderstood me, but as long as I had not told any lie I knew there was no occasion to sit up nights and worry about it.'

My friend struggled with the case several minutes, turning it over and examining it in his mind, then he said that so far as he could see the modification was itself a lie, it being a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact, and so I had told two lies instead of only one.

'I wouldn't have done it,' said he; 'I have never told a lie, and I should be very sorry to do such a thing.'

Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a basketful of surprised and delighted smiles down at a gentleman who was passing in a hansom.

'Who was that, G ?'

'I don't know.'

'Then why did you do that ?'

'Because I saw he thought he knew me and was expecting it of me. If I hadn't done it he would have been hurt. I didn't want to embarrass him before the whole street.'

'Well, your heart was right, G, and your act was right. What you did was kindly and courteous and beautiful; I would have done it myself; but it was a lie.'

'A lie? I didn't say a word. How do you make it out?'

'I know you didn't speak, still you said to him very plainly and enthusiastically in dumb show, “Hello! you in town? Awful glad to see you, old fellow; when did you get back?” Concealed in your actions was what you have called “a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact” the act that you had never seen him before. You expressed joy in encountering him, a lie; and you made that reservation, another lie. It was my pair over again. But don't be troubled, we all do it.'

Two hours later, at dinner, when quite other matters were being discussed, he told how he happened along once just in the nick of time to do a great service for a family who were old friends of his. The head of it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously disgraceful character. If know the facts would break the hearts of the innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame. There was no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it.

'The family never found out, G ?'

'Never. In all these years they have never suspected. They were proud of him and had always reason to be; they are proud of him yet, and to them his memory is sacred and stainless and beautiful.'

'They had a narrow escape, G.'

'Indeed they had.'

'For the very next man that came along might have been one of these heartless and shameless truth-mongers. You have told the truth a million times in your life, G, but that one golden lie atones for it all. Persevere.'

Some may think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the latter was affected by Bryant, the former by Carlyle.

Mr. Bryant said, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' I have taken medals at thirteen world's fairs, and may claim to be not without capacity, but I never told as big a one as that. Mr. Bryant was playing to the gallery; we all do it. Carlyle said, in substance, this - I do not remember the exact words: 'This gospel is eternal, that a lie shall not live.' I have a reverent affection for Carlyle's books, and have read his 'Revelation' eight times; and so I prefer to think he was not entirely at himself when he told that one. To me it is plain that he said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing Americans out of his backyard with brickbats. They used to go there and worship. At bottom he was probably fond of it, but he was always able to conceal it. He kept bricks for them, but he was not a good shot, and it is matter of history that when he fired they dodged, and carried off the brick; for as a nation we like relics, and so long as we get them we do not much care what the reliquary thinks about it. I am quite sure that when he told that large one about a lie not being able to live he had just missed an American and was over excited. He told it above thirty years ago, but it is alive yet; alive, and very healthy and hearty, and likely to outlive any fact in history. Carlyle was truthful when calm, but give him Americans enough and bricks enough and he could have taken medals himself.

As regards that time that George Washington told the truth, a word must be said, of course. It is the principal jewel in the crown of America, and it is but natural that we should work it for all it is worth, as Milton says in his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It was a timely and judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances. But I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth, a Tower; and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention from its sublimity by building another Tower alongside of it fourteen times as high. I refer to his remark that he 'could not lie.' I should have fed that to the marines; or left it to Carlyle; it is just in his style. It would have taken a medal at any European fair, and would have got an honourable mention even at Chicago if it had been saved up. But let it pass; the Father of his Country was excited. I have been in those circumstances, and I recollect.

With the truth he told I have no objection to offer, as already indicated. I think it was not premeditated but an inspiration. With his fine military mind, he had probably arranged to let his brother Edward in for the cherry tree results, but by an inspiration he saw his opportunity in time and took advantage of it. By telling the truth he could astonish his father; his father would tell the neighbours; the neighbours would spread it; it would travel to all firesides; in the end it would make him President, and not only that, but First President. He was a far-seeing boy and would be likely to think of these things. Therefore, to my mind, he stands justified for what he did. But not for the other Tower; it was a mistake. Still, I don't know about that; upon reflection I think perhaps it wasn't. For indeed it is that Tower that makes the other one live. If he hadn't said 'I cannot tell a lie' there would have been no convulsion. That was the earthquake that rocked the planet. That is the kind of statement that lives for ever, and a fact barnacled to it has a good chance to share its immortality.

To sum up, on the whole I am satisfied with things the way they are. There is a prejudice against the spoken lie, but none against any other, and by examination and mathematical computation I find that the proportion of the spoken lie to the other varieties is as 1 to 22,894. Therefore the spoken lie is of no consequence, and it is not worth while to go around fussing about it and trying to make believe that it is an important matter. The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples, that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at. But let us be judicious and let somebody else begin.

And then...But I have wandered from my text. How did I get out of my second lie ? I think I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it was a long time ago and some of the details have faded out of my memory. I recollect that I was reversed and stretched across some one's knee, and that something happened, but I cannot now remember what it was. I think there was music; but it is all dim now and blurred by the lapse of time, and this may be only a senile fancy.

HENRY JOHN YEEND KING (1855 - 1924) - British Painter

     Henry John Yeend King was a London painter known for his landscapes and genre subjects. A member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Royal Society of British Artists, he studied under William Bromley, Bonnat, and Cormon in Paris.

    King exhibited 115 times at the Suffolk Street Gallery and 36 times at the Royal Academy. He had at least another 200 exhibitions in England, Munich, and Berlin, as well as the 1889 Paris International Exhibition (for which he won a Bronze Medal). In 1898 his picture of ‘Milking Time’ was purchased by the Tate Gallery, one of London's finest galleries.

    King’s work is typical of popular late Victorian paintings that feature rustic themes as well as more fanciful garden scenes with beautiful ladies. In this lovely painting, his robust plein air technique and bold color palette reflect his Paris training.

SAPPHO - by Mary Grey

When the Akropolis at Athens bore its beautiful burden entire and perfect, one miniature temple stood dedicated to wingless Victory, in token that the city which had defied and driven back the barbarian should never know defeat.

But only a few decades had passed away when that temple stood as a mute and piteous witness that Athens had been laid low in the dust, and that Victory, though she could never weave a garland for Hellenes who had conquered Hellenes, was no longer a living power upon her chosen citadel. By the eighteenth century the shrine had altogether disappeared: the site only could be traced, and four slabs from its frieze were discovered close at hand, built into the walls of a Turkish powder magazine; but not another fragment could be found.

The descriptions of Pausanias and of one or two later travellers were all that remained to tell us of the whole; of its details we might form some faint conception from those frieze marbles, rescued by Lord Elgin and now in the British museum.

But we are not left to restore the temple of wingless Victory in our imagination merely, aided by description and by fragment. It stands to-day almost complete except for its shattered sculptures, placed upon its original site, and looking, among the ruins of the grander buildings around it, like a beautiful child who gazes for the first time on sorrow which it feels but cannot share. The blocks of marble taken from its walls and columns had been embedded in a mass of masonry, and when Greece was once more free, and all traces of Turkish occupation were being cleared from the Akropolis, these were carefully put together with the result that we have described.

Like this in part, but unhappily only in part, is the story of the poems of Sappho. She wrote, as the architect planned, for all time. We have one brief fragment, proud, but pathetic in its pride, that tells us she knew she was meant not altogether to die:

"I say that there will be remembrance of us hereafter,"

and again with lofty scorn she addresses some other woman:

"But thou shalt lie dead, nor shall there ever be remembrance of thee then or in the time to come, for thou hast no share in the roses of Pieria; but thou shalt wander unseen even in the halls of Hades, flitting forth amid the shades of the dead."

The words sound in our ears with a melancholy close as we remember how hopelessly lost is almost every one of those poems that all Hellas loved and praised as long as the love and praise of Hellas was of any worth. Remembrance among men was, to her, the Muses' crowning gift; that which should distinguish her from ordinary mortals, even beyond the grave, and grant her new life in death. But it was only for her songs' sake that she cared to live; she looked for immortality only because she felt that they were too fair to die.

It was almost by accident that the name of Sappho was first associated with the slanders that have ever since clung round it.

By the close of the fourth century, B.C., Athenian comedy had degenerated into brilliant and witty and scandalous farce, in many essentials resembling the new Comedy of the Restoration in England. But the vitiated Athenian palate required a seasoning which did not commend itself to English taste; it was necessary that the shafts of the writer's wit should strike some real and well-known personage.

Politics, which had furnished so many subjects and so many characters to Aristophanes, were now a barren field, and public life at Athens in those days was nothing if not political. Hence arose the practice of introducing great names of bygone days into these comedies, in all kinds of ridiculous and disgraceful surroundings.

There was a piquancy about these libels on the dead which we cannot understand, but which we may contrast with the less dishonourable process known to modern historians as "whitewashing." Just as Tiberius and Henry VIII. have been rescued from the infamy of ages, and placed among us upon pedestals of honour from which it will be difficult hereafter wholly to dislodge them, many honoured names were taken by these iconoclasts of the Middle Comedy and hurled down to such infamy as they alone could bestow.

Sappho stood out prominently as the one supreme poetess of Hellas, and the poets, if so they must be called, of the decline of Greek dramatic art were never weary of loading her name with every most disgraceful reproach they could invent. It is hardly worth while to discuss a subject so often discussed with so little profit, or it would be easy to show that these gentlemen, Ameipsias, Antiphanes, Diphilus, and the rest, were indebted solely to their imagination for their facts.

It would be as fair to take the picture of Socrates in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes for a faithful representation of the philosopher as it would be to take the Sappho of the comic stage for the true Sappho. Indeed, it would be fairer; for the Socrates of the "Clouds" is an absurd caricature, but, like every good caricature, it bore some resemblance to the original.

Aristophanes and his audience were familiar with the figure of Socrates as he went in and out amongst them; they knew his character and his manner of life; and, though the poet ventured to pervert the teaching and to ridicule the habits of a well-known citizen, he would not venture to put before the people a representation in which there was not a grain of truth.

But Sappho had been dead for two hundred years: the Athenian populace knew little of her except that she had been great and that she had been unhappy; and the descendants of the men who had thronged the theatre to see the Oedipus of Sophokles, sickening with that strange disease which makes the soul crave to batten on the fruits that are its poison, found a rare feast furnished forth in the imaginary history of the one great woman of their race.

The centuries went on, and Sappho came before the tribunal of the early Christian Church.

The chief witnesses against her were these same comic poets, who were themselves prisoners at the bar; and her judges, with the ruthless impartiality of undiscriminating zeal, condemned the whole of her works, as well as those of her accusers, to be destroyed in the flames.

Thus her works have almost totally perished: the fragments that are extant give us only the faintest hints of the grace and sweetness that we have for ever lost.

The mode of the preservation of these remains is half-pathetic, half-grotesque. We have one complete poem and a considerable portion of another; the rest are the merest fragments, now two or three lines, now two or three words, often unintelligible without their context. We have imitations and translations by Catullus and by Horace; but even Catullus has conspicuously failed to reproduce her. As Mr. Swinburne has candidly and very truly said: "No man can come close to her."

No; all that we possess of Sappho is gleaned from the dictionary, the geography, the grammar and the archæological treatise; from a host of worthy authors who are valued now chiefly for these quotations which they have enshrined. Here a painful scholar of Alexandria has preserved the phrase:

"The golden sandalled dawn but now has (waked) me,"

to show how Sappho employed the adverb. Apollonius, to prove that the Aeolic dialect had a particular form for the genitive case of the first personal pronoun, has treasured up two sad and significant utterances,

"But thou forgettest me!"

and

"Or else thou lovest another than me,"

The Aeolic genitive has saved for us another of these sorrow-laden sentences which Mr. Swinburne has amplified in some beautiful but too wordy lines. Sappho only says

"I am full weary of Gorgo."

- A few of these fragments tell us of the poet herself.

"I have a daughter like golden flowers, Kleis my beloved, for whom (I would take) not all Sydia...."

and one beautiful line which we can recognise in the translation by Catullus,

"Like a child after its mother, I..."

The touches by which she has painted nature are so fine and delicate that the only poet of our time who has a right to attempt to translate them has declared it to be "the one impossible task." Our English does, indeed, sound harsh and unmusical as we try to represent her words; yet what a picture is here:

"And round about the cold (stream) murmurs through the apple-orchards, and slumber is shed down from trembling leaves."

She makes us hear the wind upon the mountains falling on the oaks; she makes us feel the sun's radiance and beauty, as it glows through her verses; she makes us love with her the birds and the flowers that she loved. She has a womanly pity not only for the dying doves when:

"Their hearts grew cold and they dropped their wings,"

but for the hyacinth which the shepherds trample under foot upon the hillside. The golden pulse growing on the shore, the roses, the garlands of dill, are yet fragrant for us; we can even now catch the sweet tones of the "Spring's angel," as she calls it, the nightingale that sang in Lesbos ages and ages ago. One beautiful fragment has been woven with another into a few perfect lines by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; but it shall be given here as it stands. It describes a young, unwedded maiden:

"As the sweet apple blushes on the end of the bough, the very end of the bough which the gatherers overlooked nay, overlooked not, but could not reach."

The Ode to Aphrodite and the fragment to Anaktoria are too often found in translations to be quoted here. Indeed, it is of but little use to quote; for Sappho can be known only in her own language and by those who will devote time to these inestimable fragments. Their beauty grows upon us as we read; we catch in one the echo of a single tone, so sweet that it needs no harmony; and again a few stray chords that haunt the ear and fill us with an exquisite dissatisfaction; and yet again a grave and stately measure such as her rebuke to Alkaeus:

"Had thy desire been for what was good or noble and had not thy tongue framed some evil speech, shame had not filled thine eyes..."

__________

1891

RONDEAU - by E. Nesbit

RONDEAU by  E. Nesbit In vain we call to youth, "Return!" In vain to fires, "Waste not, yet burn!" In vain to all life's happy things, "Give the days song - give the hours wings ! Let us lose naught - yet always learn!" The tongue must lose youth, as it sings New knowledge still new sorrow brings: Oh, sweet lost youth, for which we yearn In vain! But even this hour from which ye turn -  Impatient - o'er its funeral urn Your soul with mad importunings Will cry, "Come back, lost hour!" So rings Ever the cry of those who yearn In vain. - 1891 -

A SONG. - by G.B. Stuart.

 

A  SONG by  G.B. Stuart. Blue eyes that laugh at early morn May weep ere close of day; And weeping is a thing of scorn To those whose hearts are gay. Ah, simple souls, beware, beware! Time's finger changeth smile to care! Gold locks that glitter as the sun May sudden fade to grey; And who shall favour anyone Despoiled of bright array? Ah, simple souls, beware of loss, Time's finger changeth gold to dross! Good lack! we talk, yet all the same We throw our words away! The smiles, the gold, the tears, the shame, Each tries them in his day. And Time, with vengeful finger, makes Of fondest goods our chief mistakes ! - 1891 -

THE CHERRY BLOSSOM - by F Tired

THE  CHERRY  BLOSSOM by  F Tired I had a dream, once when i was young, of a tree - a cherry tree to be exact. the tree's branches were covered with white cherry blossoms. they danced in the wind and sang and laughed. all except one, very out of place flower. It was white, yes, just as all the others. but it told all who would listen: I'm a apple blossom and they said back laughing and teasing silly cherry, you're a cherry blossom the cherry blossom tried to explain how it knew it was what it was. after so much laughter and rejection, the cherry went silent. but every night it'll whisper to itself I am an apple blossom I am an apple blossom I am an apple blossom one day it tried again and again they laughed and, in sheer desperation, the cherry blossom picked itself and fell, to the ground. its petals opened to revel ,what the cherry blossom had known all along. a huge apple had been hidden behind petals of an apple blossom.

BLOSSOM - by Kathleen Jamie

BLOSSOM by   Kathleen Jamie There’s this life and no hereafter – I’m sure of that but still I dither, waiting for my laggard soul to leap at the world’s touch. How many May dawns have I slept right through, the trees courageous with blossom? Let me number them . . . I shall be weighed in the balance and found wanting. I shall reckon for less than an apple pip.

SANDS OF TIME - by Diahann

SANDS  OF  TIME  by  Diahann   Have you ever counted the grains of sand, That swiftly flows through the hour glass stand? A grain of salt for every moment we toil, A grain of sand for each tear that nurtures the soil From today into tomorrow the sand will fill And for no one, does that sand, stay still Through the crack it slips, notice you not … The sands of a time, that will soon be forgot. But as was once foretold … History will repeatedly unfold, And tomorrow will once again be today, And once again the sands of time will come your way. Let it slip again, you must not, For a second chance very few have got So turn the hour glass stand … And start to count all your grains of sand.

MY WORLD - by Ashley Williams

MY  WORLD  by Ashley Williams  Look and see, Beautiful wonders, Born of mixing colors, A heaven-sent creation, My revelation. Dancing or playing, Shaping the music, Giving it form like a Joyous bird's migration, It's a revelation. Silks spinning, Jumping as if alive. Making a formation, The revelation. Hard clack of a rifle catch, Smacking in time, Unbound animation, Our revelation. Flash of sabers, Hilts whirl into the air, Reflecting shimmers of light. Not without motivation, A revelation. Means vision, That's just what it is, A vision. Revelation! A seeing from God, Revelation! Falling from the light, It is my revelation, My sight of hope, Whisper of love. Revelation.