Produced by Anne Reshnyk, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
FIFTY-ONE TALES
by Lord Dunsany
1915
CONTENTS
The Assignation
Charon
The Death of Pan
The Sphinx at Giza
The Hen
Wind and Fog
The Raft-Builders
The Workman
The Guest
Death and Odysseus
Death and the Orange
The Prayer of the Flower
Time and the Tradesman
The Little City
The Unpasturable Fields
The Worm and the Angel
The Songless Country
The Latest Thing
The Demagogue and the Demi-monde
The Giant Poppy
Roses
The Man With the Golden Ear-rings
The Dream of King Karna-Vootra
The Storm
A Mistaken Identity
The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise
Alone the Immortals
A Moral Little Tale
The Return of Song
Spring In Town
How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana
A Losing Game
Taking Up Picadilly
After the Fire
The City
The Food of Death
The Lonely Idol
The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)
The Reward
The Trouble in Leafy Green Street
The Mist
Furrow-Maker
Lobster Salad
The Return of the Exiles
Nature and Time
The Song of the Blackbird
The Messengers
The Three Tall Sons
Compromise
What We Have Come To
The Tomb of Pan
THE ASSIGNATION
Fame singing in the highways, and trifling as she sang, with sordid
adventurers, passed the poet by.
And still the poet made for her little chaplets of song, to deck her
forehead in the courts of Time: and still she wore instead the worthless
garlands, that boisterous citizens flung to her in the ways, made out of
perishable things.
And after a while whenever these garlands died the poet came to her
with his chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore the
worthless wreaths, though they always died at evening.
And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her:
"Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the byways you have not
foreborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I have
toiled for you and dreamed of you and you mock me and pass me by."
And Fame turned her back on him and walked away, but in departing
she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him as she had not smiled
before, and, almost speaking in a whisper, said:
"I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in a
hundred years."
CHARON
Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with his
weariness.
It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of wide
floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that had
become for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and was
of a piece with Eternity.
If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have divided
all time in his memory into two equal slabs.
So grey were all things always where he was that if any radiance
lingered a moment among the dead, on the face of such a queen
perhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it.
It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers.
They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. It
was neither Charon's duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul why
these things might be. Charon leaned forward and rowed.
Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the gods to send
no one down from Earth for such a space. But the gods knew best.
Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat shivering on a
lonely bench and the great boat pushed off. Only one passenger:
the gods knew best. And great and weary Charon rowed on and on
beside the little, silent, shivering ghost.
And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that Grief in the
beginning had sighed among her sisters, and that could not die like
the echoes of human sorrow failing on earthly hills, but was as old
as time and the pain in Charon's arms.
Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of
Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and
Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the
little shadow spoke, that had been a man.
"I am the last," he said.
No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever
made him weep.
THE DEATH OF PAN
When the travellers from London entered Arcady they lamented one to
another the death of Pan.
And anon they saw him lying stiff and still.
Horned Pan was still and the dew was on his fur; he had not the look
of a live animal. And then they said, "It is true that Pan is dead."
And, standing melancholy by that huge prone body, they looked for
long at memorable Pan.
And evening came and a small star appeared.
And presently from a hamlet of some Arcadian valley, with a sound
of idle song, Arcadian maidens came.
And, when they saw there, suddenly in the twilight, that old recumbent
god, they stopped in their running and whispered among themselves.
"How silly he looks," they said, and thereat they laughed a little.
And at the sound of their laughter Pan leaped up and the gravel flew
from his hooves.
And, for as long as the travellers stood and listened, the crags and
the hill-tops of Arcady rang with the sounds of pursuit.
THE SPHINX AT GIZEH
I saw the other day the Sphinx's painted face.
She had painted her face in order to ogle Time.
And he has spared no other painted face in all the world but hers.
Delilah was younger than she, and Delilah is dust. Time hath loved
nothing but this worthless painted face.
I do not care that she is ugly, nor that she has painted her face, so
that she only lure his secret from Time.
Time dallies like a fool at her feet when he should be smiting cities.
Time never wearies of her silly smile.
There are temples all about her that he has forgotten to spoil.
I saw an old man go by, and Time never touched him.
Time that has carried away the seven gates of Thebes!
She has tried to bind him with ropes of eternal sand, she had hoped
to oppress him with the Pyramids.
He lies there in the sand with his foolish hair all spread about her paws.
If she ever finds his secret we will put out his eyes, so that he shall
find no more our beautiful things--there are lovely gates in Florence
that I fear he will carry away.
We have tried to bind him with song and with old customs, but they
only held him for a little while, and he has always smitten us and
mocked us.
When he is blind he shall dance to us and make sport.
Great clumsy time shall stumble and dance, who liked to kill little
children, and can hurt even the daisies no longer.
Then shall our children laugh at him who slew Babylon's winged bulls,
and smote great numbers of the gods and fairies--when he is shorn
of his hours and his years.
We will shut him up in the Pyramid of Cheops, in the great chamber
where the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead him out when we
give our feasts. He shall ripen our corn for us and do menial work.
We will kiss they painted face, O Sphinx, if thou wilt betray to us Time.
And yet I fear that in his ultimate anguish he may take hold blindly
of the world and the moon, and slowly pull down upon him the
House of Man.
THE HEN
All along the farmyard gables the swallows sat a-row, twittering
uneasily to one another, telling of many things, but thinking only of
Summer and the South, for Autumn was afoot and the North wind
waiting.
And suddenly one day they were all quite gone. And everyone
spoke of the swallows and the South.
"I think I shall go South myself next year," said a hen.
And the year wore on and the swallows came again, and the year
wore on and they sat again on the gables, and all the poultry discussed
the departure of the hen.
And very early one morning, the wind being from the North, the
swallows all soared suddenly and felt the wind in their wings; and a
strength came upon them and a strange old knowledge and a more
than human faith, and flying high they left the smoke of our cities and
small remembered eaves, and saw at last the huge and homeless sea,
and steering by grey sea-currents went southward with the wind. And
going South they went by glittering fog-banks and saw old islands lifting
their heads above them; they saw the slow quests of the wandering
ships, and divers seeking pearls, and lands at war, till there came in
view the mountains that they sought and the sight of the peaks they
knew; and they descended into an austral valley, and saw Summer
sometimes sleeping and sometimes singing song.
"I think the wind is about right," said the hen; and she spread her
wings and ran out of the poultry-yard. And she ran fluttering out on
to the road and some way down it until she came to a garden.
At evening she came back panting.
And in the poultry-yard she told the poultry how she had gone South
as far as the high road, and saw the great world's traffic going by,
and came to lands where the potato grew, and saw the stubble upon
which men live, and at the end of the road had found a garden, and
there were roses in it--beautiful roses!--and the gardener himself was
there with his braces on.
"How extremely interesting," the poultry said, "and what a really
beautiful description!"
And the Winter wore away, and the bitter months went by, and the
Spring of the year appeared, and the swallows came again.
"We have been to the South," they said, "and the valleys beyond
the sea."
But the poultry would not agree that there was a sea in the South:
"You should hear our hen," they said.
WIND AND FOG
"Way for us," said the North Wind as he came down the sea on an
errand of old Winter.
And he saw before him the grey silent fog that lay along the tides.
"Way for us," said the North Wind, "O ineffectual fog, for I am
Winter's leader in his age-old war with the ships. I overwhelm
them suddenly in my strength, or drive upon them the huge seafaring
bergs. I cross an ocean while you move a mile. There is mourning in
inland places when I have met the ships. I drive them upon the rocks
and feed the sea. Wherever I appear they bow to our lord the Winter."
And to his arrogant boasting nothing said the fog. Only he rose up
slowly and trailed away from the sea and, crawling up long valleys,
took refuge among the hills; and night came down and everything was
still, and the fog began to mumble in the stillness. And I heard him
telling infamously to himself the tale of his horrible spoils. "A
hundred and fifteen galleons of old Spain, a certain argosy that went
from Tyre, eight fisher-fleets and ninety ships of the line, twelve
warships under sail, with their carronades, three hundred and
eighty-seven river-craft, forty-two merchantmen that carried spice,
four quinquiremes, ten triremes, thirty yachts, twenty-one battleships
of the modern time, nine thousand admirals...." he mumbled and chuckled
on, till I suddenly arose and fled from his fearful contamination.
THE RAFT-BUILDERS
All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon
doomed ships.
When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity
with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile
upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our
names and a phrase or two and little else.
They that write as a trade to please the whim of the day, they are like
sailors that work at the rafts only to warm their hands and to distract
their thoughts from their certain doom; their rafts go all to pieces
before the ship breaks up.
See now Oblivion shimmering all around us, its very tranquility deadlier
than tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it. Time in its deeps
swims like a monstrous whale; and, like a whale, feeds on the littlest
things--small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden, golden
evenings--and anon turneth whale-like to overthrow whole ships.
See now the wreckage of Babylon floating idly, and something there
that once was Nineveh; already their kings and queens are in the
deeps among the weedy masses of old centuries that hide the sodden
bulk of sunken Tyre and make a darkness round Persepolis.
For the rest I dimly see the forms of foundered ships on the sea-floor
strewn with crowns.
Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.
There goes the raft that Homer made for Helen.
THE WORKMAN
I saw a workman fall with his scaffolding right from the summit of
some vast hotel. And as he came down I saw him holding a knife
and trying to cut his name on the scaffolding. He had time to try and
do this for he must have had nearly three hundred feet to fall. And I
could think of nothing but his folly in doing this futile thing, for not
only would the man be unrecognizably dead in three seconds, but the
very pole on which he tried to scratch whatever of his name he had
time for was certain to be burnt in a few weeks for firewood.
Then I went home for I had work to do. And all that evening I thought
of the man's folly, till the thought hindered me from serious work.
And late that night while I was still at work, the ghost of the workman
floated through my wall and stood before me laughing.
I heard no sound until after I spoke to it; but I could see the grey
diaphanous form standing before me shuddering with laughter.
I spoke at last and asked what it was laughing at, and then the ghost
spoke. It said: "I'm a laughin' at you sittin' and workin' there."
"And why," I asked, "do you laugh at serious work?"
"Why, yer bloomin' life 'ull go by like a wind," he said, "and yer 'ole
silly civilization 'ull be tidied up in a few centuries."
Then he fell to laughing again and this time audibly; and, laughing
still, faded back through the wall again and into the eternity from
which he had come.
THE GUEST
A young man came into an ornate restaurant at eight o'clock in
London.
He was alone, but two places had been laid at the table which was
reserved for him. He had chosen the dinner very carefully, by letter
a week before.
A waiter asked him about the other guest.
"You probably won't see him till the coffee comes," the young man
told him; so he was served alone.
Those at adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continually
addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it
throughout his elaborate dinner.
"I think you knew my father," he said to it over the soup.
"I sent for you this evening," he continued, "because I want you to
do me a good turn; in fact I must insist on it."
There was nothing eccentric about the man except for this habit of
addressing an empty chair, certainly he was eating as good a dinner
as any sane man could wish for.
After the Burgundy had been served he became more voluble in his
monologue, not that he spoiled his wine by drinking excessively.
"We have several acquaintances in common," he said. "I met King Seti
a year ago in Thebes. I think he has altered very little since you knew
him. I thought his forehead a little low for a king's. Cheops has left the
house that he built for your reception, he must have prepared for you
for years and years. I suppose you have seldom been entertained like
that. I ordered this dinner over a week ago. I thought then that a lady
might have come with me, but as she wouldn't I've asked you. She may
not after all be as lovely as Helen of Troy. Was Helen very lovely? Not
when you knew her, perhaps. You were lucky in Cleopatra, you must
have known her when she was in her prime.
"You never knew the mermaids nor the fairies nor the lovely goddesses
of long ago, that's where we have the best of you."
He was silent when the waiters came to his table, but rambled merrily
on as soon as they left, still turned to the empty chair.
"You know I saw you here in London only the other day. You were
on a motor bus going down Ludgate Hill. It was going much too fast.
London is a good place. But I shall be glad enough to leave it. It was
in London that I met the lady I that was speaking about. If it hadn't
been for London I probably shouldn't have met her, and if it hadn't
been for London she probably wouldn't have had so much besides
me to amuse her. It cuts both ways."
He paused once to order coffee, gazing earnestly at the waiter and
putting a sovereign in his hand. "Don't let it be chicory," said he.
The waiter brought the coffee, and the young man dropped a tabloid
of some sort into his cup.
"I don't suppose you come here very often," he went on. "Well, you
probably want to be going. I haven't taken you much out of your way,
there is plenty for you to do in London."
Then having drunk his coffee he fell on to the floor by a foot of the
empty chair, and a doctor who was dining in the room bent over
him and announced to the anxious manager the visible presence of
the young man's guest.
DEATH AND ODYSSEUS
In the Olympian courts Love laughed at Death, because he was
unsightly, and because She couldn't help it, and because he never
did anything worth doing, and because She would.
And Death hated being laughed at, and used to brood apart thinking
only of his wrongs and of what he could do to end this intolerable
treatment.
But one day Death appeared in the courts with an air and They all
noticed it. "What are you up to now?" said Love. And Death with
some solemnity said to Her: "I am going to frighten Odysseus"; and
drawing about him his grey traveller's cloak went out through the
windy door with his jowl turned earthwards.
And he came soon to Ithaca and the hall that Athene knew, and
opened the door and saw there famous Odysseus, with his white
locks bending close over the fire, trying to warm his hands.
And the wind through the open door blew bitterly on Odysseus.
And Death came up behind him, and suddenly shouted.
And Odysseus went on warming his pale hands.
Then Death came close and began to mouth at him. And after a
while Odysseus turned and spoke. And "Well, old servant," he said,
"have your masters been kind to you since I made you work for me
round Ilion?"
And Death for some while stood mute, for he thought of the laughter
of Love.
Then "Come now," said Odysseus, "lend me your shoulder," and he
leaning heavily on that bony joint, they went together through the open
door.
DEATH AND THE ORANGE
Two dark young men in a foreign southern land sat at a restaurant
table with one woman.
And on the woman's plate was a small orange which had an evil
laughter in its heart.
And both of the men would be looking at the woman all the time, and
they ate little and they drank much.
And the woman was smiling equally at each.
Then the small orange that had the laughter in its heart rolled
slowly off the plate on to the floor. And the dark young men both
sought for it at once, and they met suddenly beneath the table, and
soon they were speaking swift words to one another, and a horror
and an impotence came over the Reason of each as she sat helpless
at the back of the mind, and the heart of the orange laughed and the
woman went on smiling; and Death, who was sitting at another table,
tete-a-tete with an old man, rose and came over to listen to the quarrel.
THE PRAYER OF THE FLOWERS
It was the voice of the flowers on the West wind, the lovable, the
old, the lazy West wind, blowing ceaselessly, blowing sleepily, going
Greecewards.
"The woods have gone away, they have fallen and left us; men love
us no longer, we are lonely by moonlight. Great engines rush over
the beautiful fields, their ways lie hard and terrible up and down the
land.
"The cancrous cities spread over the grass, they clatter in their lairs
continually, they glitter about us blemishing the night.
"The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods. And thou art
far, O Pan, and far away."
I was standing by night between two railway embankments on the
edge of a Midland city. On one of them I saw the trains go by, once
in every two minutes, and on the other, the trains went by twice in
every five.
Quite close were the glaring factories, and the sky above them wore
the fearful look that it wears in dreams of fever.
The flowers were right in the stride of that advancing city, and
thence I heard them sending up their cry. And then I heard, beating
musically up wind, the voice of Pan reproving them from Arcady--
"Be patient a little, these things are not for long."
TIME AND THE TRADESMAN
Once Time as he prowled the world, his hair grey not with weakness
but with dust of the ruin of cities, came to a furniture shop and entered
the Antique department. And there he saw a man darkening the wood
of a chair with dye and beating it with chains and making imitation
wormholes in it.
And when Time saw another doing his work he stood by him awhile
and looked on critically.
And at last he said: "That is not how I work," and he turned the man's
hair white and bent his back and put some furrows in his little cunning
face; then turned and strode away, for a mighty city that was weary
and sick and too long had troubled the fields was sore in need of him.
THE LITTLE CITY
I was in the pre-destined 11.8 from Goraghwood to Drogheda, when
I suddenly saw the city. It was a little city in a valley, and only seemed
to have a little smoke, and the sun caught the smoke and turned it
golden, so that it looked like an old Italian picture where angels walk
in the foreground and the rest is a blaze of gold. And beyond, as one
could tell by the lie of land although one could not see through the
golden smoke, I knew that there lay the paths of the roving ships.
All round there lay a patchwork of small fields all over the slopes of
the hills, and the snow had come upon them tentatively, but already
the birds of the waste had moved to the sheltered places for every
omen boded more to fall. Far away some little hills blazed like an
aureate bulwark broken off by age and fallen from the earthward
rampart of Paradise. And aloof and dark the mountains stared
unconcernedly seawards.
And when I saw those grey and watchful mountains sitting where
they sat while the cities of the civilization of Araby and Asia arose
like crocuses, and like crocuses fell, I wondered for how long there
would be smoke in the valley and little fields on the hills.
THE UNPASTURABLE FIELDS
Thus spake the mountains: "Behold us, even us; the old ones, the
grey ones, that wear the feet of Time. Time on our rocks shall break
his staff and stumble: and still we shall sit majestic, even as now,
hearing the sound of the sea, our old coeval sister, who nurses the
bones of her children and weeps for the things she has done.
"Far, far, we stand above all things; befriending the little cities until
they grow old and leave us to go among the myths.
"We are the most imperishable mountains."
And softly the clouds foregathered from far places, and crag on
crag and mountain upon mountain in the likeness of Caucasus upon
Himalaya came riding past the sunlight upon the backs of storms and
looked down idly from their golden heights upon the crests of the
mountains.
"Ye pass away," said the mountains.
And the clouds answered, as I dreamed or fancied,
"We pass away, indeed we pass away, but upon our unpasturable
fields Pegasus prances. Here Pegasus gallops and browses upon
song which the larks bring to him every morning from far terrestrial
fields. His hoof-beats ring upon our slopes at sunrise as though our
fields were of silver. And breathing the dawn-wind in dilated nostrils,
with head tossed upwards and with quivering wings, he stands and
stares from our tremendous heights, and snorts and sees far-future
wonderful wars rage in the creases and the folds of the togas that
cover the knees of the gods."
THE WORM AND THE ANGEL
As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel.
And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths
and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in
their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far
wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and
the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.
And the worm spake to the angel saying: "Behold my food."
"Be dakeon para Thina poluphloisboio Thalassaes," murmured the
angel, for they walked by the sea, "and can you destroy that too?"
And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for
three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its
melody was ringing in his head.
THE SONGLESS COUNTRY
The poet came unto a great country in which there were no songs.
And he lamented gently for the nation that had not any little foolish
songs to sing to itself at evening.
And at last he said: "I will make for them myself some little foolish
songs so that they may be merry in the lanes and happy by the
fireside." And for some days he made for them aimless songs such
as maidens sing on the hills in the older happier countries.
Then he went to some of that nation as they sat weary with the
work of the day and said to them: "I have made you some aimless
songs out of the small unreasonable legends, that are somewhat akin
to the wind in the vales of my childhood; and you may care to sing
them in your disconsolate evenings."
And they said to him:
"If you think we have time for that sort of nonsense nowadays
you cannot know much of the progress of modern commerce."
And then the poet wept for he said: "Alas! They are damned."
THE LATEST THING
I saw an unclean-feeder by the banks of the river of Time. He crouched
by orchards numerous with apples in a happy land of flowers; colossal
barns stood near which the ancients had stored with grain, and the sun
was golden on serene far hills behind the level lands. But his back was
to all these things. He crouched and watched the river. And whatever
the river chanced to send him down the unclean-feeder clutched at
greedily with his arms, wading out into the water.
Now there were in those days, and indeed still are, certain uncleanly
cities upon the river of Time; and from them fearfully nameless things
came floating shapelessly by. And whenever the odor of these came
down the river before them the unclean-feeder plunged into the dirty
water and stood far out, expectant. And if he opened his mouth one
saw these things on his lips.
Indeed from the upper reaches there came down sometimes the
fallen rhododendron's petal, sometimes a rose; but they were useless
to the unclean-feeder, and when he saw them he growled.
A poet walked beside the river's bank; his head was lifted and his
look was afar; I think he saw the sea, and the hills of Fate from which
the river ran. I saw the unclean-feeder standing voracious, up to his
waist in that evil-smelling river.
"Look," I said to the poet.
"The current will sweep him away," the poet said.
"But those cities that poison the river," I said to him.
He answered: "Whenever the centuries melt on the hills of Fate the
river terribly floods."
THE DEMAGOGUE AND THE DEMI-MONDE
A demagogue and a demi-mondaine chanced to arrive together at
the gate of Paradise. And the Saint looked sorrowfully at them both.
"Why were you a demagogue?" he said to the first.
"Because," said the demagogue, "I stood for those principles that
have made us what we are and have endeared our Party to the great
heart of the people. In a word I stood unflinchingly on the plank of
popular representation."
"And you?" said the Saint to her of the demi-monde.
"I wanted money," said the demi-mondaine.
And after some moments' thought the Saint said: "Well, come in;
though you don't deserve to."
But to the demagogue he said: "We genuinely regret that the limited
space at our disposal and our unfortunate lack of interest in those
Questions that you have gone so far to inculate and have so ably
upheld in the past, prevent us from giving you the support for which
you seek."
And he shut the golden door.
THE GIANT POPPY
I dreamt that I went back to the hills I knew, whence on a clear day
you can see the walls of Ilion and the plains of Roncesvalles. There
used to be woods along the tops of those hills with clearings in them
where the moonlight fell, and there when no one watched the fairies
danced.
But there were no woods when I went back, no fairies nor distant
glimpse of Ilion or plains of Roncesvalles, only one giant poppy waved
in the wind, and as it waved it hummed "Remember not." And by its
oak-like stem a poet sat, dressed like a shepherd and playing an
ancient tune softly upon a pipe. I asked him if the fairies had passed
that way or anything olden.
He said: "The poppy has grown apace and is killing gods and
fairies. Its fumes are suffocating the world, and its roots drain it
of its beautiful strength." And I asked him why he sat on the hills I
knew, playing an olden tune.
And he answered: "Because the tune is bad for the poppy, which
would otherwise grow more swiftly; and because if the brotherhood
of which I am one were to cease to pipe on the hills men would stray
over the world and be lost or come to terrible ends. We think we have
saved Agamemnon."
Then he fell to piping again that olden tune, while the wind among the
poppy's sleepy petals murmured "Remember not. Remember not."
ROSES
I know a roadside where the wild rose blooms with a strange
abundance. There is a beauty in the blossoms too of an almost
exotic kind, a taint of deeper pink that shocks the Puritan flowers.
Two hundred generations ago (generations, I mean, of roses) this
was a village street; there was a floral decadence when they left their
simple life and the roses came from the wilderness to clamber round
houses of men.
Of all the memories of that little village, of all the cottages that stood
there, of all the men and women whose homes they were, nothing
remains but a more beautiful blush on the faces of the roses.
I hope that when London is clean passed away and the defeated fields
come back again, like an exiled people returning after a war, they may
find some beautiful thing to remind them of it all; because we have loved
a little that swart old city.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN EAR-RINGS
It may be that I dreamed this. So much at least is certain--that I
turned one day from the traffic of a city, and came to its docks and
saw its slimy wharves going down green and steep into the water, and
saw the huge grey river slipping by and the lost things that went with it
turning over and over, and I thought of the nations and unpitying Time,
and saw and marvelled at the queenly ships come newly from the sea.
It was then, if I mistake not, that I saw leaning against a wall, with his
face to the ships, a man with golden ear-rings. His skin had the dark
tint of the southern men: the deep black hairs of his moustache were
whitened a little with salt; he wore a dark blue jacket such as sailors
wear, and the long boots of seafarers, but the look in his eyes was
further afield than the ships, he seemed to be beholding the farthest
things.
Even when I spoke to him he did not call home that look, but
answered me dreamily with that same fixed stare as though his
thoughts were heaving on far and lonely seas. I asked him what ship
he had come by, for there were many there. The sailing ships were
there with their sails all furled and their masts straight and still like a
wintry forest; the steamers were there, and great liners, puffing up idle
smoke into the twilight. He answered he had come by none of them.
I asked him what line he worked on, for he was clearly a sailor; I
mentioned well-known lines, but he did not know them. Then I asked
him where he worked and what he was. And he said: "I work in the
Sargasso Sea, and I am the last of the pirates, the last left alive." And
I shook him by the hand I do not know how many times. I said: "We
feared you were dead. We feared you were dead." And he answered
sadly: "No. No. I have sinned too deeply on the Spanish seas: I am
not allowed to die."
THE DREAM OF KING KARNA-VOOTRA
King Karna-Vootra sitting on his throne commanding all things said:
"I very clearly saw last night the queenly Vava-Nyria. Though partly
she was hidden by great clouds that swept continually by her, rolling
over and over, yet her face was unhidden and shone, being full of
moonlight.
"I said to her:
"'Walk with me by the great pools in many-gardened, beautiful
Istrakhan where the lilies float that give delectable dreams; or,
drawing aside the curtain of hanging orchids, pass with me thence
from the pools by a secret path through the else impassable jungle
that fills the only way between the mountains that shut in Istrakhan.
They shut it in and look on it with joy at morning and at evening when
the pools are strange with light, till in their gladness sometimes there
melts the deadly snow that kills upon lonely heights the mountaineer.
They have valleys among them older than the wrinkles in the moon.
"'Come with me thence or linger with me there and either we shall
come to romantic lands which the men of the caravans only speak
of in song; or else we shall listlessly walk in a land so lovely that
even the butterflies that float about it when they see their images
flash in the sacred pools are terrified by their beauty, and each night
we shall hear the myriad nightingales all in one chorus sing the stars
to death. Do this and I will send heralds far from here with tidings
of thy beauty; and they shall run and come to Sendara and men
shall know it there who herd brown sheep; and from Sendara the
rumour shall spread on, down either bank of the holy river of Zoth,
till the people that make wattles in the plains shall hear of it and sing;
but the heralds shall go northward along the hills until they come to
Sooma. And in that golden city they shall tell the kings, that sit in their
lofty alabaster house, of thy strange and sudden smiles. And often in
distant markets shall thy story be told by merchants out from Sooma
as they sit telling careless tales to lure men to their wares.
"'And the heralds passing thence shall come even to Ingra, to
Ingra where they dance. And there they shall tell of thee, so that
thy name long hence shall be sung in that joyous city. And there they
shall borrow camels and pass over the sands and go by desert ways
to distant Nirid to tell of thee to the lonely men in the mountain
monasteries.
"'Come with me even now for it is Spring.'"
"And as I said this she faintly yet perceptibly shook her head. And it
was only then I remembered my youth was gone, and she dead forty
years."
THE STORM
They saw a little ship that was far at sea and that went by the name
of the _Petite Esperance_. And because of its uncouth rig and its
lonely air and the look that it had of coming from strangers' lands they
said: "It is neither a ship to greet nor desire, nor yet to succor when in
the hands of the sea."
And the sea rose up as is the wont of the sea and the little ship from
afar was in his hands, and frailer than ever seemed its feeble masts
with their sails of fantastic cut and their alien flags. And the sea made
a great and very triumphing voice, as the sea doth. And then there
arose a wave that was very strong, even the ninth-born son of the
hurricane and the tide, and hid the little ship and hid the whole of the
far parts of the sea. Thereat said those who stood on the good dry
land:
"'Twas but a little, worthless alien ship and it is sunk at sea, and it is
good and right that the storm have spoil." And they turned and watched
the course of the merchant-men, laden with silver and appeasing spice;
year after year they cheered them into port and praised their goods and
their familiar sails. And many years went by.
And at last with decks and bulwarks covered with cloth of gold; with
age-old parrots that had known the troubadours, singing illustrious
songs and preening their feathers of gold; with a hold full of emeralds
and rubies; all silken with Indian loot; furling as it came in its way-worn
alien sails, a galleon glided into port, shutting the sunlight from the
merchantmen: and lo! it loomed the equal of the cliffs.
"Who are you?" they asked, "far-travelled wonderful ship?"
And they said: "The _Petite Esperance_."
"O," said the people on shore. "We thought you were sunk at sea."
"Sunk at sea?" sang the sailors. "We could not be sunk at sea--we
had the gods on board."
A MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Fame as she walked at evening in a city saw the painted face of
Notoriety flaunting beneath a gas-lamp, and many kneeled unto her
in the dirt of the road.
"Who are you?" Fame said to her.
"I am Fame," said Notoriety.
Then Fame stole softly away so that no one knew she had gone.
And Notoriety presently went forth and all her worshippers rose and
followed after, and she led them, as was most meet, to her native Pit.
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE
For a long time there was doubt with acrimony among the beasts as
to whether the Hare or the Tortoise could run the swifter. Some said
the Hare was the swifter of the two because he had such long ears,
and others said the Tortoise was the swifter because anyone whose
shell was so hard as that should be able to run hard too. And lo, the
forces of estrangement and disorder perpetually postponed a decisive
contest.
But when there was nearly war among the beasts, at last an
arrangement was come to and it was decided that the Hare and the
Tortoise should run a race of five hundred yards so that all should
see who was right.
"Ridiculous nonsense!" said the Hare, and it was all his backers could
do to get him to run.
"The contest is most welcome to me," said the Tortoise, "I shall not
shirk it."
O, how his backers cheered.
Feeling ran high on the day of the race; the goose rushed at the fox
and nearly pecked him. Both sides spoke loudly of the approaching
victory up to the very moment of the race.
"I am absolutely confident of success," said the Tortoise. But
the Hare said nothing, he looked bored and cross. Some of his
supporters deserted him then and went to the other side, who were
loudly cheering the Tortoise's inspiriting words. But many remained
with the Hare. "We shall not be disappointed in him," they said. "A
beast with such long ears is bound to win."
"Run hard," said the supporters of the Tortoise.
And "run hard" became a kind of catch-phrase which everybody
repeated to one another. "Hard shell and hard living. That's what
the country wants. Run hard," they said. And these words were
never uttered but multitudes cheered from their hearts.
Then they were off, and suddenly there was a hush.
The Hare dashed off for about a hundred yards, then he looked
round to see where his rival was.
"It is rather absurd," he said, "to race with a Tortoise." And he sat
down and scratched himself. "Run hard! Run hard!" shouted some.
"Let him rest," shouted others. And "let him rest" became a
catch-phrase too.
And after a while his rival drew near to him.
"There comes that damned Tortoise," said the Hare, and he got up
and ran as hard as could be so that he should not let the Tortoise
beat him.
"Those ears will win," said his friends. "Those ears will win; and
establish upon an incontestable footing the truth of what we have
said." And some of them turned to the backers of the Tortoise and
said: "What about your beast now?"
"Run hard," they replied. "Run hard."
The Hare ran on for nearly three hundred yards, nearly in fact as far
as the winning-post, when it suddenly struck him what a fool he looked
running races with a Tortoise who was nowhere in sight, and he sat
down again and scratched.
"Run hard. Run hard," said the crowd, and "Let him rest."
"Whatever is the use of it?" said the Hare, and this time he stopped
for good. Some say he slept.
There was desperate excitement for an hour or two, and then the
Tortoise won.
"Run hard. Run hard," shouted his backers. "Hard shell and hard
living: that's what has done it." And then they asked the Tortoise what
his achievement signified, and he went and asked the Turtle. And the
Turtle said, "It is a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness." And
then the Tortoise repeated it to his friends. And all the beasts said
nothing else for years. And even to this day, "a glorious victory for
the forces of swiftness" is a catch-phrase in the house of the snail.
And the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is
that very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire
that happened shortly after. It came up over the weald by night with
a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts
saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and
they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should
send to warn the beasts in the forest.
They sent the Tortoise.
ALONE THE IMMORTALS
I heard it said that far away from here, on the wrong side of the
deserts of Cathay and in a country dedicate to winter, are all the years
that are dead. And there a certain valley shuts them in and hides them,
as rumor has it, from the world, but not from the sight of the moon nor
from those that dream in his rays.
And I said: I will go from here by ways of dream and I will come to
that valley and enter in and mourn there for the good years that are
dead. And I said: I will take a wreath, a wreath of mourning, and lay
it at their feet in token of my sorrow for their dooms.
And when I sought about among the flowers, among the flowers for
my wreath of mourning, the lily looked too large and the laurel looked
too solemn and I found nothing frail enough nor slender to serve as an
offering to the years that were dead. And at last I made a slender
wreath of daisies in the manner that I had seen them made in one of
the years that is dead.
"This," said I, "is scarce less fragile or less frail than one of those
delicate forgotten years." Then I took my wreath in my hand and
went from here. And when I had come by paths of mystery to that
romantic land, where the valley that rumour told of lies close to the
mountainous moon, I searched among the grass for those poor slight
years for whom I bought my sorrow and my wreath. And when I found
there nothing in the grass I said: "Time has shattered them and swept
them away and left not even any faint remains."
But looking upwards in the blaze of the moon I suddenly saw colossi
sitting near, and towering up and blotting out the stars and filling the
night with blackness; and at those idols' feet I saw praying and making
obeisance kings and the days that are and all times and all cities and all
nations and all their gods. Neither the smoke of incense nor of the
sacrifice burning reached those colossal heads, they sat there not to
be measured, not to be over-thrown, not to be worn away.
I said: "Who are those?"
One answered: "Alone the Immortals."
And I said sadly: "I came not to see dread gods, but I came to shed
my tears and to offer flowers at the feet of certain little years that are
dead and may not come again."
He answered me: "These _are_ the years that are dead, alone the
immortals; all years to be are Their children--They fashioned their
smiles and their laughter; all earthly kings They have crowned, all
gods They have created; all the events to be flow down from their
feet like a river, the worlds are flying pebbles that They have already
thrown, and Time and all his centuries behind him kneel there with
bended crests in token of vassalage at Their potent feet."
And when I heard this I turned away with my wreath, and went back
to my own land comforted.
A MORAL LITTLE TALE
There was once an earnest Puritan who held it wrong to dance. And
for his principles he labored hard, his was a zealous life. And there
loved him all of those who hated the dance; and those that loved the
dance respected him too; they said "He is a pure, good man and acts
according to his lights."
He did much to discourage dancing and helped to close several
Sunday entertainments. Some kinds of poetry, he said, he liked, but
not the fanciful kind as that might corrupt the thoughts of the very young.
He always dressed in black.
He was quite interested in morality and was quite sincere and there
grew to be much respect on Earth for his honest face and his flowing
pure-white beard.
One night the Devil appeared unto him in a dream and said "Well done."
"Avaunt," said that earnest man.
"No, no, friend," said the Devil.
"Dare not to call me 'friend,'" he answered bravely.
"Come, come, friend," said the Devil. "Have you not done my work? Have
you not put apart the couples that would dance? Have you not checked
their laughter and their accursed mirth? Have you not worn my livery
of black? O friend, friend, you do not know what a detestable thing
it is to sit in hell and hear people being happy, and singing in
theatres and singing in the fields, and whispering after dances under
the moon," and he fell to cursing fearfully.
"It is you," said the Puritan, "that put into their hearts the evil desire
to dance; and black is God's own livery, not yours."
And the Devil laughed contemptuously and spoke.
"He only made the silly colors," he said, "and useless dawns on
hill-slopes facing South, and butterflies flapping along them as soon
as the sun rose high, and foolish maidens coming out to dance, and
the warm mad West wind, and worst of all that pernicious influence
Love."
And when the Devil said that God made Love that earnest man
sat up in bed and shouted "Blasphemy! Blasphemy!"
"It's true," said the Devil. "It isn't I that send the village fools
muttering and whispering two by two in the woods when the
harvest moon is high, it's as much as I can bear even to see them
dancing."
"Then," said the man, "I have mistaken right for wrong; but as soon
as I wake I will fight you yet."
"O, no you don't," said the Devil. "You don't wake up out of this sleep."
And somewhere far away Hell's black steel doors were opened, and
arm in arm those two were drawn within, and the doors shut behind
them and still they went arm in arm, trudging further and further into
the deeps of Hell, and it was that Puritan's punishment to know that
those that he cared for on Earth would do evil as he had done.
THE RETURN OF SONG
"The swans are singing again," said to one another the gods. And
looking downwards, for my dreams had taken me to some fair and
far Valhalla, I saw below me an iridescent bubble not greatly larger
than a star shine beautifully but faintly, and up and up from it looking
larger and larger came a flock of white, innumerable swans, singing
and singing and singing, till it seemed as though even the gods were
wild ships swimming in music.
"What is it?" I said to one that was humble among the gods.
"Only a world has ended," he said to me, "and the swans are coming
back to the gods returning the gift of song."
"A whole world dead!" I said.
"Dead," said he that was humble among the gods. "The worlds are
not for ever; only song is immortal."
"Look! Look!" he said. "There will be a new one soon."
And I looked and saw the larks, going down from the gods.
SPRING IN TOWN
At a street corner sat, and played with a wind, Winter disconsolate.
Still tingled the fingers of the passers-by and still their breath was
visible, and still they huddled their chins into their coats when turning
a corner they met with a new wind, still windows lighted early sent out
into the street the thought of romantic comfort by evening fires; these
things still were, yet the throne of Winter tottered, and every breeze
brought tidings of further fortresses lost on lakes or boreal hill-slopes.
And not any longer as a king did Winter appear in those streets, as when
the city was decked with gleaming white to greet him as a conqueror and
he rode in with his glittering icicles and haughty retinue of prancing
winds, but he sat there with a little wind at the corner of the street like
some old blind beggar with his hungry dog. And as to some old blind
beggar Death approaches, and the alert ears of the sightless man
prophetically hear his far-off footfall, so there came suddenly to
Winter's ears the sound, from some neighbouring garden, of Spring
approaching as she walked on daisies. And Spring approaching looked
at huddled inglorious Winter.
"Begone," said Spring.
"There is nothing for you to do here," said Winter to her. Nevertheless
he drew about him his grey and battered cloak and rose and called to
his little bitter wind and up a side street that led northward strode away.
Pieces of paper and tall clouds of dust went with him as far as the city's
outer gate. He turned then and called to Spring: "You can do nothing
in this city," he said; then he marched homeward over plains and sea
and heard his old winds howling as he marched. The ice broke up
behind him and foundered like navies. To left and to right of him flew
the flocks of the sea-birds, and far before him the geese's triumphant
cry went like a clarion. Greater and greater grew his stature as he went
northwards and ever more kingly his mien. Now he took baronies at
a stride and now counties and came again to the snow-white frozen
lands where the wolves came out to meet him and, draping himself
anew with old grey clouds, strode through the gates of his invincible
home, two old ice barriers swinging on pillars of ice that had never
known the sun.