Excerpts

The WavesTHE SUN had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow, spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue fingerprint of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.I SEE a ring, said Bernard, hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in a loop of light.I see a slab of pale yellow, said Susan, spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.I hear a sound, said Rhoda, cheep, chirp; cheep, chirp; going up and down.I see a globe, said Neville, hanging down in a drop against the enormous flanks of some hill.I see a crimson tassel, said Jinny, twisted with gold threads.I hear something stamping, said Louis. A great beasts foot is chained. It stamps, and stamps, and stamps.Look at the spiders web on the corner of the balcony, said Bernard. It has beads of water on it, drops of white light.The leaves are gathered round the window like pointed ears, said Susan.A shadow falls on the path, said Louis, like an elbow bent.Islands of light are swimming on the grass, said Rhoda. They have f Excerpted from The Waves by Virginia Woolf All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.