In Heaven and Earth (19 page)

“
Of course,”
Vairya said, a little weakly, and squeezed Reuben’s
hand.

Jibrail looked at them,
and his mouth tilted up in an all too familiar smirk. “I understand
it is good etiquette to invite your best man to speak at your
wedding. I would appreciate it if you asked someone else to take on
the role. I abhor public speaking.”

And, before either of
them could do more than splutter, he strolled away into the
hospital, already talking on his com.

“
I, on the
other hand,” Meili said, “love embarrassing people in public. I
think I’d be outstanding at the job.”

“
We’re not
getting married,” Reuben said, before this got completely out of
hand.

“
Yet,” Vairya
added dreamily and then blushed when Reuben stared at
him.

Meili cackled and then
darted forwards to hug them both, which was the strangest thing
yet. “I might just miss working with you when we leave, Cooper. You
weren’t so bad in the end.”

“
We are
actually dead, aren’t we?” Reuben said to Vairya. “This cannot be
real.”

“‘
For in that
sleep of death what dreams may come’?” Vairya murmured, his eyes
still wide. “If we are dead, it must have been two weeks ago,
because nothing in my world makes much sense anymore.”

Reuben couldn’t resist.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Vairya, than are dreamt
of in your philosophy.”

Vairya narrowed his eyes
at him. “Oh, you did not just do that.”

“
Yet you still
love me,” Reuben said, lifting his face to the sun.

“
Of course,”
Vairya said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to forgive you for
mangling Shakespeare.”

Reuben smiled and brought
Vairya’s hand to his mouth to kiss his knuckles. “But you won’t
kick me out of your garden?”

“
Never,” Vairya
said and turned to kiss him, and somewhere in even this tiny garden
there must be flowers, because Reuben could smell roses. Or perhaps
the scent simply came drifting to him from this great garden city,
Caelestia in the stars, which had flowered again and would now be
forever his home, the place where the roses grew, tended by the
garden knight he loved.

The End

Bibliography

Below you will find a
list of all the quotations Vairya and Reuben use in their banter.
Where the quotation comes from a shorter poem, I have included the
whole piece; for longer poems I have included the relevant stanza.
I have not included passing allusions or references which are not
direct quotations—you can hunt those down yourself.

Chapter
One

‘
Look on my
works, ye mighty, and despair’, Percy Bysshe Shelley. ‘Ozymandias’,
1818

I met a traveller from an
antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Chapter
Two

‘
If it be now,
’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be
not now, yet it will come— the readiness is all’, William
Shakespeare,
Hamlet,
Act 5, Scene 2, 1603

Not a whit, we defy
augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

‘
Conscience
does make cowards of us all’ William Shakespeare,
Hamlet,
Act 3, Scene 1,
1603

Thus conscience does make
cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Chapter
Four

‘
And they shall
beat their swords into ploughshare, and their spears into pruning
hooks’, King James Bible, Isaiah 2:4

And he shall judge among
the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat
their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they
learn war any more.

Chapter
Six

‘
And if thine
eye offend thee, pluck it out’, King James Bible, Matthew 18:9,
1611

And if thine
eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it
from thee: it is better for thee to
enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be
cast into hell fire.

Chapter
Seven/Eight

‘
This is how
the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper’, T. S. Eliot,
‘The Hollow Men’, 1925. Reuben and Vairya both quote from this poem
at length during this chapter.

This is the way the world
ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

‘
The game’s
afoot’

‘
like
greyhounds in the slips’

‘
Once more into
the breach’ William Shakespeare,
Henry
V
, Act 3, Scene 1. All these quotations
come from the same speech:

Once more unto the
breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

‘
Breeding
lilacs out of the dead land’, T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’.
1922

April is the cruellest
month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead
land, mixing

Memory and desire,
stirring

Dull roots with spring
rain.

Winter kept us warm,
covering

Earth in forgetful snow,
feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

‘
Hollow
men’

‘
Shape without
form, shade without colour’, both from T. S. Eliot, ‘The Hollow
Men’, 1925

We are the hollow
men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

‘
So all day
long the noise of battle roll’d among the mountains by the winter
sea’, Alfred, Lord Tennyson ‘Morte D’Arthur’,
The Idylls of the King, 1869

‘
Sing, O muse,
of the wrath of Achilles’, Homer,
Odyssey

‘
This day is
called the feast of Crispian’, William Shakespeare,
Henry V
, Act 4, Scene 3,
1599

This day is called the
feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd

‘
Until King
Arthur’s table, man by man, had fall’n in Lyonnesse about their
Lord’ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ‘Morte D’Arthur’,
The Idylls of the King, 1869

So all day long the noise
of battle roll'd

Among the mountains by
the winter sea;

Until King Arthur's
table, man by man,

Had fallen in Lyonnesse
about their Lord,

King Arthur: then,
because his wound was deep,

The bold Sir Bedivere
uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of
all his knights,

And bore him to a chapel
nigh the field,

A broken chancel with a
broken cross,

That stood on a dark
strait of barren land.

On one side lay the
ocean, and on one

Lay a great water, and
the moon was full.

‘
Such a sleep
they sleep— the men I loved. I think that we shall never more, at
any future time, delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
walking about the gardens and the halls’, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
‘Morte D’Arthur’,
The Idylls of the King,
1869

The sequel of to-day
unsolders all

The goodliest fellowship
of famous knights

Whereof this world holds
record. Such a sleep

They sleep—the men I
loved. I think that we

Shall never more, at any
future time,

Delight our souls with
talk of knightly deeds,

Walking about the gardens
and the halls

Of Camelot, as in the
days that were.

I perish by this people
which I made,—

Tho' Merlin sware that I
should come again

To rule once more—but let
what will be, be.

‘
Of Man’s First
Disobedience, and the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree’, John
Milton,
Paradise Lost
, Book I, 1669

OFMans First
Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,[ 5 ]
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai,didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos

Chapter
Nine

‘
Sing no sad
songs for me’, Christina Rossetti, ‘Song’, 1848

When I am dead, my
dearest,

Sing no sad songs for
me;

Plant thou no roses at my
head,

Nor shady cypress
tree:

Be the green grass above
me

With showers and dewdrops
wet;

And if thou wilt,
remember,

And if thou wilt,
forget.

‘
darkling
plain’, Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’, 1867