The Hostage 1 (version)

It was an autumn afternoon when the high school building was shut down. Everything was done quietly, almost secretly, as the wet leaves drooped from nearby trees, and slight whisks of wind stirred them up into piles.
The school itself was grey, solemn, with dark windows and a fearful, forbidding air. The hostages were grouped together in a high room, overlooking a grim parade-ground. The room had formerly been utilised as a headmaster's study, and was filled with collegiate accoutrements, rather dusty and old-fashioned in the dimness of the room. There was a mortar-board, an old globe beside bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes. The window was of a handsome old construction, rusted-shut long before. In that room one had the feeling that something beautiful had once taken place there, looking from the windows had once been a joy, you could gaze on a bright emerald cricket lawn bathed in glorious sunlight, and wet with dew.
Beyond the window you could see the crumbling granite cornices and cupolas of this neglected building.
Incongruously, though, there was also a large, old-fashioned kind of double bed in the room, with crisp linen and a heavy wrought-iron bedstead, which took up a lot of space so that the people in the room had to manoeuvre around it uncomfortably. Assembled in this brown, dusty room were perhaps a dozen people, all of them frightened out of their wits, for they were being held hostage. All of them were confused and sweating, afraid for their lives.  

When will we Drink the New Wine?

When will we drink the new wine,
Promised to us in olden time,
And when shall the honoured bells sound,
With new-resplendent chime.
And when will the gates that we laboured to build
Be opened for us that endlessly tilled
The unforgiving ground?

When we will we dwell in the palaces fair
That were built on the backs of our sorrows and care,
And when shall we glimpse the wondrous things
Which are imprisoned there?
We who trod the grapes and tended the vine,
When will we drink the new wine?