ORP: PKD & the John Dowland poem

I just finished “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said” by Philip K. Dick. In addition to dealing with mutating reality, the story takes place in a future totalitarian United States. Since the book was written in 1970 and published in 1974, the imagined future technology is a bit dated, but conceptually the story is still valid.

Toward the end of the book I ran across the following passage from the POV of the police general (a character in the book):

…don’t come to the attention of the authorities. Don’t ever interest us. Don’t make us want to know more about you.
Someday your story, the ritual and shape of your downfall, may be made public, at a remote future time when it no longer matters. When there are no more forced-labor camps and no more campuses surrounded by rings of police carrying rapid-firing submachine guns and wearing gas masks that make them like great-snouted, huge-eyed root-eaters, some kind of noxious lower animal. Someday there may be a postmortem inquiry and it will be learned that you in fact did no harm—did nothing, actually, but become noticed.

And here is the John Dowland lute song that inspired PKD in the story.

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.

Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.

From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.