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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10806 ***
+
+
+
+
+THE SWORD OF WELLERAN AND OTHER STORIES
+
+By Lord Dunsany Author of “Time and the Gods,” etc.
+
+
+DEDICATED
+
+with deep gratitude to those few, known to me or unknown, who have
+cared for either of my former books, “The Gods of Pegana,” “Time and
+the Gods.”
+
+
+
+
+The Sword of Welleran
+
+
+Where the great plain of Tarphet runs up, as the sea in estuaries,
+among the Cyresian mountains, there stood long since the city of
+Merimna well-nigh among the shadows of the crags. I have never seen a
+city in the world so beautiful as Merimna seemed to me when first I
+dreamed of it. It was a marvel of spires and figures of bronze, and
+marble fountains, and trophies of fabulous wars, and broad streets
+given over wholly to the Beautiful. Right through the centre of the
+city there went an avenue fifty strides in width, and along each side
+of it stood likenesses in bronze of the Kings of all the countries that
+the people of Merimna had ever known. At the end of that avenue was a
+colossal chariot with three bronze horses driven by the winged figure
+of Fame, and behind her in the chariot the huge form of Welleran,
+Merimna’s ancient hero, standing with extended sword. So urgent was
+the mien and attitude of Fame, and so swift the pose of the horses,
+that you had sworn that the chariot was instantly upon you, and that
+its dust already veiled the faces of the Kings. And in the city was
+a mighty hall wherein were stored the trophies of Merimna’s heroes.
+Sculptured it was and domed, the glory of the art of masons a long
+while dead, and on the summit of the dome the image of Rollory sat
+gazing across the Cyresian mountains towards the wide lands beyond, the
+lands that knew his sword. And beside Rollory, like an old nurse, the
+figure of Victory sat, hammering into a golden wreath of laurels for
+his head the crowns of fallen Kings.
+
+Such was Merimna, a city of sculptured Victories and warriors of
+bronze. Yet in the time of which I write the art of war had been
+forgotten in Merimna, and the people almost slept. To and fro and
+up and down they would walk through the marble streets, gazing at
+memorials of the things achieved by their country’s swords in the hands
+of those that long ago had loved Merimna well. Almost they slept, and
+dreamed of Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young
+Iraine. Of the lands beyond the mountains that lay all round about them
+they knew nothing, save that they were the theatre of the terrible
+deeds of Welleran, that he had done with his sword. Long since these
+lands had fallen back into the possession of the nations that had been
+scourged by Merimna’s armies. Nothing now remained to Merimna’s men
+save their inviolate city and the glory of the remembrance of their
+ancient fame. At night they would place sentinels far out in the
+desert, but these always slept at their posts dreaming of Rollory, and
+three times every night a guard would march around the city clad in
+purple, bearing lights and singing songs of Welleran. Always the guard
+went unarmed, but as the sound of their song went echoing across the
+plain towards the looming mountains, the desert robbers would hear
+the name of Welleran and steal away to their haunts. Often dawn would
+come across the plain, shimmering marvellously upon Merimna’s spires,
+abashing all the stars, and find the guard still singing songs of
+Welleran, and would change the colour of their purple robes and pale
+the lights they bore. But the guard would go back leaving the ramparts
+safe, and one by one the sentinels in the plain would awake from
+dreaming of Rollory and shuffle back into the city quite cold. Then
+something of the menace would pass away from the faces of the Cyresian
+mountains, that from the north and the west and the south lowered upon
+Merimna, and clear in the morning the statues and the pillars would
+arise in the old inviolate city. You would wonder that an unarmed guard
+and sentinels that slept could defend a city that was stored with all
+the glories of art, that was rich in gold and bronze, a haughty city
+that had erst oppressed its neighbours, whose people had forgotten the
+art of war. Now this is the reason that, though all her other lands
+had long been taken from her, Merimna’s city was safe. A strange thing
+was believed or feared by the fierce tribes beyond the mountains, and
+it was credited among them that at certain stations round Merimna’s
+ramparts there still rode Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory,
+Akanax, and young Iraine. Yet it was close on a hundred years since
+Iraine, the youngest of Merimna’s heroes, fought his last battle with
+the tribes.
+
+Sometimes indeed there arose among the tribes young men who doubted and
+said: ‘How may a man for ever escape death?’
+
+But graver men answered them: ‘Hear us, ye whose wisdom has discerned
+so much, and discern for us how a man may escape death when two score
+horsemen assail him with their swords, all of them sworn to kill him,
+and all of them sworn upon their country’s gods; as often Welleran
+hath. Or discern for us how two men alone may enter a walled city by
+night, and bring away from it that city’s king, as did Soorenard and
+Mommolek. Surely men that have escaped so many swords and so many
+sleety arrows shall escape the years and Time.’
+
+And the young men were humbled and became silent. Still, the suspicion
+grew. And often when the sun set on the Cyresian mountains, men in
+Merimna discerned the forms of savage tribesmen black against the
+light, peering towards the city.
+
+All knew in Merimna that the figures round the ramparts were only
+statues of stone, yet even there a hope lingered among a few that some
+day their old heroes would come again, for certainly none had ever seen
+them die. Now it had been the wont of these six warriors of old, as
+each received his last wound and knew it to be mortal, to ride away to
+a certain deep ravine and cast his body in, as somewhere I have read
+great elephants do, hiding their bones away from lesser beasts. It was
+a ravine steep and narrow even at the ends, a great cleft into which no
+man could come by any path. There rode Welleran alone, panting hard;
+and there later rode Soorenard and Mommolek, Mommolek with a mortal
+wound upon him not to return, but Soorenard was unwounded and rode back
+alone from leaving his dear friend resting among the mighty bones of
+Welleran. And there rode Soorenard, when his day was come, with Rollory
+and Akanax, and Rollory rode in the middle and Soorenard and Akanax on
+either side. And the long ride was a hard and weary thing for Soorenard
+and Akanax, for they both had mortal wounds; but the long ride was
+easy for Rollory, for he was dead. So the bones of these five heroes
+whitened in an enemy’s land, and very still they were, though they
+had troubled cities, and none knew where they lay saving only Iraine,
+the young captain, who was but twenty-five when Mommolek, Rollory,
+and Akanax rode away. And among them were strewn their saddles and
+their bridles, and all the accoutrements of their horses, lest any man
+should ever find them afterwards and say in some foreign city: ‘Lo! the
+bridles or the saddles of Merimna’s captains, taken in war,’ but their
+beloved trusty horses they turned free.
+
+Forty years afterwards, in the hour of a great victory, his last wound
+came upon Iraine, and the wound was terrible and would not close. And
+Iraine was the last of the captains, and rode away alone. It was a long
+way to the dark ravine, and Iraine feared that he would never come to
+the resting-place of the old heroes, and he urged his horse on swiftly,
+and clung to the saddle with his hands. And often as he rode he fell
+asleep, and dreamed of earlier days, and of the times when he first
+rode forth to the great wars of Welleran, and of the time when Welleran
+first spake to him, and of the faces of Welleran’s comrades when they
+led charges in the battle. And ever as he awoke a great longing arose
+in his soul as it hovered on his body’s brink, a longing to lie among
+the bones of the old heroes. At last when he saw the dark ravine making
+a scar across the plain, the soul of Iraine slipped out through his
+great wound and spread its wings, and pain departed from the poor
+hacked body, and, still urging his horse forward, Iraine died. But the
+old true horse cantered on till suddenly he saw before him the dark
+ravine and put his forefeet out on the very edge of it and stopped.
+Then the body of Iraine came toppling forward over the right shoulder
+of the horse, and his bones mingle and rest as the years go by with the
+bones of Merimna’s heroes.
+
+Now there was a little boy in Merimna named Rold. I saw him first,
+I, the dreamer, that sit before my fire asleep, I saw him first as
+his mother led him through the great hall where stand the trophies of
+Merimna’s heroes. He was five years old, and they stood before the
+great glass casket wherein lay the sword of Welleran, and his mother
+said: ‘The sword of Welleran.’ And Rold said: ‘What should a man do
+with the sword of Welleran?’ And his mother answered: ‘Men look at the
+sword and remember Welleran.’ And they went on and stood before the
+great red cloak of Welleran, and the child said: ‘Why did Welleran wear
+this great red cloak?’ And his mother answered: ‘It was the way of
+Welleran.’
+
+When Rold was a little older he stole out of his mother’s house quite
+in the middle of the night when all the world was still, and Merimna
+asleep dreaming of Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and
+young Iraine. And he went down to the ramparts to hear the purple guard
+go by singing of Welleran. And the purple guard came by with lights,
+all singing in the stillness, and dark shapes out in the desert turned
+and fled. And Rold went back again to his mother’s house with a great
+yearning towards the name of Welleran, such as men feel for very holy
+things.
+
+And in time Rold grew to know the pathway all round the ramparts, and
+the six equestrian statues that were there guarding Merimna still.
+These statues were not like other statues, they were so cunningly
+wrought of many-coloured marbles that none might be quite sure until
+very close that they were not living men. There was a horse of dappled
+marble, the horse of Akanax. The horse of Rollory was of alabaster,
+pure white, his armour was wrought out of a stone that shone, and his
+horseman’s cloak was made of a blue stone, very precious. He looked
+northwards.
+
+But the marble horse of Welleran was pure black, and there sat Welleran
+upon him looking solemnly westwards. His horse it was whose cold neck
+Rold most loved to stroke, and it was Welleran whom the watchers at
+sunset on the mountains the most clearly saw as they peered towards the
+city. And Rold loved the red nostrils of the great black horse and his
+rider’s jasper cloak.
+
+Now beyond the Cyresians the suspicion grew that Merimna’s heroes
+were dead, and a plan was devised that a man should go by night and
+come close to the figures upon the ramparts and see whether they were
+Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Iraine. And
+all were agreed upon the plan, and many names were mentioned of those
+who should go, and the plan matured for many years. It was during these
+years that watchers clustered often at sunset upon the mountains but
+came no nearer. Finally, a better plan was made, and it was decided
+that two men who had been by chance condemned to death should be given
+a pardon if they went down into the plain by night and discovered
+whether or not Merimna’s heroes lived. At first the two prisoners dared
+not go, but after a while one of them, Seejar, said to his companion,
+Sajar-Ho: ‘See now, when the King’s axeman smites a man upon the neck
+that man dies.’
+
+And the other said that this was so. Then said Seejar: ‘And even though
+Welleran smite a man with his sword no more befalleth him than death.’
+
+Then Sajar-Ho thought for a while. Presently he said: ‘Yet the eye of
+the King’s axeman might err at the moment of his stroke or his arm fail
+him, and the eye of Welleran hath never erred nor his arm failed. It
+were better to bide here.’
+
+Then said Seejar: ‘Maybe that Welleran is dead and that some other
+holds his place upon the ramparts, or even a statue of stone.’
+
+But Sajar-Ho made answer: ‘How can Welleran be dead when he even
+escaped from two score horsemen with swords that were sworn to slay
+him, and all sworn upon our country’s gods?’
+
+And Seejar said: ‘This story his father told my grandfather concerning
+Welleran. On the day that the fight was lost on the plains of Kurlistan
+he saw a dying horse near to the river, and the horse looked piteously
+towards the water but could not reach it. And the father of my
+grandfather saw Welleran go down to the river’s brink and bring water
+from it with his own hand and give it to the horse. Now we are in as
+sore a plight as was that horse, and as near to death; it may be that
+Welleran will pity us, while the King’s axeman cannot because of the
+commands of the King.’
+
+Then said Sajar-Ho: ‘Thou wast ever a cunning arguer. Thou broughtest
+us into this trouble with thy cunning and thy devices, we will see if
+thou canst bring us out of it. We will go.’
+
+So news was brought to the King that the two prisoners would go down to
+Merimna.
+
+That evening the watchers led them to the mountain’s edge, and Seejar
+and Sajar-Ho went down towards the plain by the way of a deep ravine,
+and the watchers watched them go. Presently their figures were wholly
+hid in the dusk. Then night came up, huge and holy, out of waste
+marshes to the eastwards and low lands and the sea; and the angels
+that watched over all men through the day closed their great eyes and
+slept, and the angels that watched over all men through the night awoke
+and ruffled their deep blue feathers and stood up and watched. But the
+plain became a thing of mystery filled with fears. So the two spies
+went down the deep ravine, and coming to the plain sped stealthily
+across it. Soon they came to the line of sentinels asleep upon the
+sand, and one stirred in his sleep calling on Rollory, and a great
+dread seized upon the spies and they whispered ‘Rollory lives,’ but
+they remembered the King’s axeman and went on. And next they came to
+the great bronze statue of Fear, carved by some sculptor of the old
+glorious years in the attitude of flight towards the mountains, calling
+to her children as she fled. And the children of Fear were carved in
+the likeness of the armies of all the trans-Cyresian tribes with their
+backs towards Merimna, flocking after Fear. And from where he sat on
+his horse behind the ramparts the sword of Welleran was stretched out
+over their heads as ever it was wont. And the two spies kneeled down in
+the sand and kissed the huge bronze foot of the statue of Fear, saying:
+‘O Fear, Fear.’ And as they knelt they saw lights far off along the
+ramparts coming nearer and nearer, and heard men singing of Welleran.
+And the purple guard came nearer and went by with their lights, and
+passed on into the distance round the ramparts still singing of
+Welleran. And all the while the two spies clung to the foot of the
+statue, muttering: ‘O Fear, Fear.’ But when they could hear the name of
+Welleran no more they arose and came to the ramparts and climbed over
+them and came at once upon the figure of Welleran, and they bowed low
+to the ground, and Seejar said: ‘O Welleran, we came to see whether
+thou didst yet live.’ And for a long while they waited with their faces
+to the earth. At last Seejar looked up towards Welleran’s terrible
+sword, and it was still stretched out pointing to the carved armies
+that followed after Fear. And Seejar bowed to the ground again and
+touched the horse’s hoof, and it seemed cold to him. And he moved his
+hand higher and touched the leg of the horse, and it seemed quite cold.
+At last he touched Welleran’s foot, and the armour on it seemed hard
+and stiff. Then as Welleran moved not and spake not, Seejar climbed up
+at last and touched his hand, the terrible hand of Welleran, and it
+was marble. Then Seejar laughed aloud, and he and Sajar-Ho sped down
+the empty pathway and found Rollory, and he was marble too. Then they
+climbed down over the ramparts and went back across the plain, walking
+contemptuously past the figure of Fear, and heard the guard returning
+round the ramparts for the third time, singing of Welleran; and Seejar
+said: ‘Ay, you may sing of Welleran, but Welleran is dead and a doom is
+on your city.’
+
+And they passed on and found the sentinel still restless in the night
+and calling on Rollory. And Sajar-Ho muttered: ‘Ay, you may call on
+Rollory, but Rollory is dead and naught can save your city.’
+
+And the two spies went back alive to their mountains again, and as
+they reached them the first ray of the sun came up red over the desert
+behind Merimna and lit Merimna’s spires. It was the hour when the
+purple guard were wont to go back into the city with their tapers
+pale and their robes a brighter colour, when the cold sentinels came
+shuffling in from dreaming in the desert; it was the hour when the
+desert robbers hid themselves away, going back to their mountain caves;
+it was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for
+a day; it was the hour when men die that are condemned to death; and
+in this hour a great peril, new and terrible, arose for Merimna and
+Merimna knew it not.
+
+Then Seejar turning said: ‘See how red the dawn is and how red the
+spires of Merimna. They are angry with Merimna in Paradise and they
+bode its doom.’
+
+So the two spies went back and brought the news to their King, and for
+a few days the Kings of those countries were gathering their armies
+together; and one evening the armies of four Kings were massed together
+at the top of the deep ravine, all crouching below the summit waiting
+for the sun to set. All wore resolute and fearless faces, yet inwardly
+every man was praying to his gods, unto each one in turn.
+
+Then the sun set, and it was the hour when the bats and the dark
+creatures are abroad and the lions come down from their lairs, and the
+desert robbers go into the plains again, and fevers rise up winged and
+hot out of chill marshes, and it was the hour when safety leaves the
+thrones of Kings, the hour when dynasties change. But in the desert the
+purple guard came swinging out of Merimna with their lights to sing of
+Welleran, and the sentinels lay down to sleep.
+
+Now into Paradise no sorrow may ever come, but may only beat like rain
+against its crystal walls, yet the souls of Merimna’s heroes were
+half aware of some sorrow far away as some sleeper feels that some
+one is chilled and cold yet knows not in his sleep that it is he. And
+they fretted a little in their starry home. Then unseen there drifted
+earthward across the setting sun the souls of Welleran, Soorenard,
+Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Iraine. Already when they reached
+Merimna’s ramparts it was just dark, already the armies of the four
+Kings had begun to move, jingling, down the deep ravine. But when the
+six warriors saw their city again, so little changed after so many
+years, they looked towards her with a longing that was nearer to tears
+than any that their souls had known before, crying to her:
+
+‘O Merimna, our city: Merimna, our walled city.
+
+‘How beautiful thou art with all thy spires, Merimna. For thee we left
+the earth, its kingdoms and little flowers, for thee we have come away
+for awhile from Paradise.
+
+‘It is very difficult to draw away from the face of God—it is like a
+warm fire, it is like dear sleep, it is like a great anthem, yet there
+is a stillness all about it, a stillness full of lights.
+
+‘We have left Paradise for awhile for thee, Merimna.
+
+‘Many women have we loved, Merimna, but only one city.
+
+‘Behold now all the people dream, all our loved people. How beautiful
+are dreams! In dreams the dead may live, even the long dead and the
+very silent. Thy lights are all sunk low, they have all gone out, no
+sound is in thy streets. Hush! Thou art like a maiden that shutteth up
+her eyes and is asleep, that draweth her breath softly and is quite
+still, being at ease and untroubled.
+
+‘Behold now the battlements, the old battlements. Do men defend them
+still as we defended them? They are worn a little, the battlements,’
+and drifting nearer they peered anxiously. ‘It is not by the hand of
+man that they are worn, our battlements. Only the years have done it
+and indomitable Time. Thy battlements are like the girdle of a maiden,
+a girdle that is round about her. See now the dew upon them, they are
+like a jewelled girdle.
+
+‘Thou art in great danger, Merimna, because thou art so beautiful. Must
+thou perish tonight because we no more defend thee, because we cry out
+and none hear us, as the bruised lilies cry out and none have known
+their voices?’
+
+Thus spake those strong-voiced, battle-ordering captains, calling to
+their dear city, and their voices came no louder than the whispers of
+little bats that drift across the twilight in the evening. Then the
+purple guard came near, going round the ramparts for the first time in
+the night, and the old warriors called to them, ‘Merimna is in danger!
+Already her enemies gather in the darkness.’ But their voices were
+never heard because they were only wandering ghosts. And the guard went
+by and passed unheeding away, still singing of Welleran.
+
+Then said Welleran to his comrades: ‘Our hands can hold swords no more,
+our voices cannot be heard, we are stalwart men no longer. We are but
+dreams, let us go among dreams. Go all of you, and thou too, young
+Iraine, and trouble the dreams of all the men that sleep, and urge them
+to take the old swords of their grandsires that hang upon the walls,
+and to gather at the mouth of the ravine; and I will find a leader and
+make him take my sword.’
+
+Then they passed up over the ramparts and into their dear city. And the
+wind blew about, this way and that, as he went, the soul of Welleran
+who had upon his day withstood the charges of tempestuous armies. And
+the souls of his comrades, and with them young Iraine, passed up into
+the city and troubled the dreams of every man who slept, and to every
+man the souls said in their dreams: ‘It is hot and still in the city.
+Go out now into the desert, into the cool under the mountains, but take
+with thee the old sword that hangs upon the wall for fear of the desert
+robbers.’
+
+And the god of that city sent up a fever over it, and the fever brooded
+over it and the streets were hot; and all that slept awoke from
+dreaming that it would be cool and pleasant where the breezes came
+down the ravine out of the mountains; and they took the old swords
+that their grandsires had, according to their dreams, for fear of the
+desert robbers. And in and out of dreams passed the souls of Welleran’s
+comrades, and with them young Iraine, in great haste as the night wore
+on; and one by one they troubled the dreams of all Merimna’s men and
+caused them to arise and go out armed, all save the purple guard who,
+heedless of danger, sang of Welleran still, for waking men cannot hear
+the souls of the dead.
+
+But Welleran drifted over the roofs of the city till he came to the
+form of Rold lying fast asleep. Now Rold was grown strong and was
+eighteen years of age, and he was fair of hair and tall like Welleran,
+and the soul of Welleran hovered over him and went into his dreams as a
+butterfly flits through trellis-work into a garden of flowers, and the
+soul of Welleran said to Rold in his dreams: ‘Thou wouldst go and see
+again the sword of Welleran, the great curved sword of Welleran. Thou
+wouldst go and look at it in the night with the moonlight shining upon
+it.’
+
+And the longing of Rold in his dreams to see the sword caused him to
+walk still sleeping from his mother’s house to the hall wherein were
+the trophies of the heroes. And the soul of Welleran urging the dreams
+of Rold caused him to pause before the great red cloak, and there the
+soul said among the dreams: ‘Thou art cold in the night; fling now a
+cloak around thee.’
+
+And Rold drew round about him the huge red cloak of Welleran. Then
+Rold’s dreams took him to the sword, and the soul said to the dreams:
+‘Thou hast a longing to hold the sword of Welleran: take up the sword
+in thy hand.’
+
+But Rold said: ‘What should a man do with the sword of Welleran?’
+
+And the soul of the old captain said to the dreams: ‘It is a good sword
+to hold: take up the sword of Welleran.’
+
+And Rold, still sleeping and speaking aloud, said: ‘It is not lawful;
+none may touch the sword.’
+
+And Rold turned to go. Then a great and terrible cry arose in the soul
+of Welleran, all the more bitter for that he could not utter it, and it
+went round and round his soul finding no utterance, like a cry evoked
+long since by some murderous deed in some old haunted chamber that
+whispers through the ages heard by none.
+
+And the soul of Welleran cried out to the dreams of Rold: ‘Thy knees
+are tied! Thou art fallen in a marsh! Thou canst not move.’
+
+And the dreams of Rold said to him: ‘Thy knees are tied, thou art
+fallen in a marsh,’ and Rold stood still before the sword. Then the
+soul of the warrior wailed among Rold’s dreams, as Rold stood before
+the sword.
+
+‘Welleran is crying for his sword, his wonderful curved sword. Poor
+Welleran, that once fought for Merimna, is crying for his sword in
+the night. Thou wouldst not keep Welleran without his beautiful sword
+when he is dead and cannot come for it, poor Welleran who fought for
+Merimna.’
+
+And Rold broke the glass casket with his hand and took the sword, the
+great curved sword of Welleran; and the soul of the warrior said among
+Rold’s dreams: ‘Welleran is waiting in the deep ravine that runs into
+the mountains, crying for his sword.’
+
+And Rold went down through the city and climbed over the ramparts, and
+walked with his eyes wide open but still sleeping over the desert to
+the mountains.
+
+Already a great multitude of Merimna’s citizens were gathered in the
+desert before the deep ravine with old swords in their hands, and Rold
+passed through them as he slept holding the sword of Welleran, and the
+people cried in amaze to one another as he passed: ‘Rold hath the sword
+of Welleran!’
+
+And Rold came to the mouth of the ravine, and there the voices of the
+people woke him. And Rold knew nothing that he had done in his sleep,
+and looked in amazement at the sword in his hand and said: ‘What art
+thou, thou beautiful thing? Lights shimmer in thee, thou art restless.
+It is the sword of Welleran, the curved sword of Welleran!’
+
+And Rold kissed the hilt of it, and it was salt upon his lips with the
+battle-sweat of Welleran. And Rold said: ‘What should a man do with the
+sword of Welleran?’
+
+And all the people wondered at Rold as he sat there with the sword in
+his hand muttering, ‘What should a man do with the sword of Welleran?’
+
+Presently there came to the ears of Rold the noise of a jingling up in
+the ravine, and all the people, the people that knew naught of war,
+heard the jingling coming nearer in the night; for the four armies were
+moving on Merimna and not yet expecting an enemy. And Rold gripped
+upon the hilt of the great curved sword, and the sword seemed to lift
+a little. And a new thought came into the hearts of Merimna’s people
+as they gripped their grandsires’ swords. Nearer and nearer came the
+heedless armies of the four Kings, and old ancestral memories began
+to arise in the minds of Merimna’s people in the desert with their
+swords in their hands sitting behind Rold. And all the sentinels were
+awake holding their spears, for Rollory had put their dreams to flight,
+Rollory that once could put to flight armies and now was but a dream
+struggling with other dreams.
+
+And now the armies had come very near. Suddenly Rold leaped up, crying:
+‘Welleran! And the sword of Welleran!’ And the savage, lusting sword
+that had thirsted for a hundred years went up with the hand of Rold and
+swept through a tribesman’s ribs. And with the warm blood all about it
+there came a joy into the curved soul of that mighty sword, like to
+the joy of a swimmer coming up dripping out of warm seas after living
+for long in a dry land. When they saw the red cloak and that terrible
+sword a cry ran through the tribal armies, ‘Welleran lives!’ And there
+arose the sounds of the exulting of victorious men, and the panting of
+those that fled, and the sword singing softly to itself as it whirled
+dripping through the air. And the last that I saw of the battle as
+it poured into the depth and darkness of the ravine was the sword
+of Welleran sweeping up and falling, gleaming blue in the moonlight
+whenever it arose and afterwards gleaming red, and so disappearing into
+the darkness.
+
+But in the dawn Merimna’s men came back, and the sun arising to give
+new life to the world, shone instead upon the hideous things that
+the sword of Welleran had done. And Rold said: ‘O sword, sword! How
+horrible thou art! Thou art a terrible thing to have come among men.
+How many eyes shall look upon gardens no more because of thee? How
+many fields must go empty that might have been fair with cottages,
+white cottages with children all about them? How many valleys must go
+desolate that might have nursed warm hamlets, because thou hast slain
+long since the men that might have built them? I hear the wind crying
+against thee, thou sword! It comes from the empty valleys. It comes
+over the bare fields. There are children’s voices in it. They were
+never born. Death brings an end to crying for those that had life once,
+but these must cry for ever. O sword! sword! why did the gods send thee
+among men?’ And the tears of Rold fell down upon the proud sword but
+could not wash it clean.
+
+And now that the ardour of battle had passed away, the spirits of
+Merimna’s people began to gloom a little, like their leader’s, with
+their fatigue and with the cold of the morning; and they looked at the
+sword of Welleran in Rold’s hand and said: ‘Not any more, not any more
+for ever will Welleran now return, for his sword is in the hand of
+another. Now we know indeed that he is dead. O Welleran, thou wast our
+sun and moon and all our stars. Now is the sun fallen down and the moon
+broken, and all the stars are scattered as the diamonds of a necklace
+that is snapped off one who is slain by violence.’
+
+Thus wept the people of Merimna in the hour of their great victory,
+for men have strange moods, while beside them their old inviolate city
+slumbered safe. But back from the ramparts and beyond the mountains
+and over the lands that they had conquered of old, beyond the world
+and back again to Paradise, went the souls of Welleran, Soorenard,
+Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Iraine.
+
+
+
+
+The Fall of Babbulkund
+
+
+I said: ‘I will arise now and see Babbulkund, City of Marvel. She is
+of one age with the earth; the stars are her sisters. Pharaohs of
+the old time coming conquering from Araby first saw her, a solitary
+mountain in the desert, and cut the mountain into towers and terraces.
+They destroyed one of the hills of God, but they made Babbulkund. She
+is carven, not built; her palaces are one with her terraces, there is
+neither join nor cleft. Hers is the beauty of the youth of the world.
+She deemeth herself to be the middle of Earth, and hath four gates
+facing outward to the Nations. There sits outside her eastern gate a
+colossal god of stone. His face flushes with the lights of dawn. When
+the morning sunlight warms his lips they part a little, and he giveth
+utterance to the words “Oon Oom,” and the language is long since dead
+in which he speaks, and all his worshippers are gathered to their
+tombs, so that none knoweth what the words portend that he uttereth at
+dawn. Some say that he greets the sun as one god greets another in the
+language thereof, and others say that he proclaims the day, and others
+that he uttereth warning. And at every gate is a marvel not credible
+until beholden.’
+
+And I gathered three friends and said to them: ‘We are what we have
+seen and known. Let us journey now and behold Babbulkund, that our
+minds may be beautified with it and our spirits made holier.’
+
+So we took ship and travelled over the lifting sea, and remembered not
+things done in the towns we knew, but laid away the thoughts of them
+like soiled linen and put them by, and dreamed of Babbulkund.
+
+But when we came to the land of which Babbulkund is the abiding glory,
+we hired a caravan of camels and Arab guides, and passed southwards in
+the afternoon on the three days’ journey through the desert that should
+bring us to the white walls of Babbulkund. And the heat of the sun
+shone upon us out of the bright grey sky, and the heat of the desert
+beat up at us from below.
+
+About sunset we halted and tethered our horses, while the Arabs
+unloaded the provisions from the camels and prepared a fire out of
+the dry scrub, for at sunset the heat of the desert departs from it
+suddenly, like a bird. Then we saw a traveller approaching us on a
+camel coming from the south. When he was come near we said to him:
+
+‘Come and encamp among us, for in the desert all men are brothers, and
+we will give thee meat to eat and wine, or, if thou art bound by thy
+faith, we will give thee some other drink that is not accursed by the
+prophet.’
+
+The traveller seated himself beside us on the sand, and crossed his
+legs and answered:
+
+‘Hearken, and I will tell you of Babbulkund, City of Marvel. Babbulkund
+stands just below the meeting of the rivers, where Oonrana, River of
+Myth, flows into the Waters of Fable, even the old stream Plegáthanees.
+These, together, enter her northern gate rejoicing. Of old they flowed
+in the dark through the Hill that Nehemoth, the first of Pharaohs,
+carved into the City of Marvel. Sterile and desolate they float far
+through the desert, each in the appointed cleft, with life upon neither
+bank, but give birth in Babbulkund to the sacred purple garden whereof
+all nations sing. Thither all the bees come on a pilgrimage at evening
+by a secret way of the air. Once, from his twilit kingdom, which he
+rules equally with the sun, the moon saw and loved Babbulkund, clad
+with her purple garden; and the moon wooed Babbulkund, and she sent
+him weeping away, for she is more beautiful than all her sisters the
+stars. Her sisters come to her at night into her maiden chamber. Even
+the gods speak sometimes of Babbulkund, clad with her purple garden.
+Listen, for I perceive by your eyes that ye have not seen Babbulkund;
+there is a restlessness in them and an unappeased wonder. Listen. In
+the garden whereof I spoke there is a lake that hath no twin or fellow
+in the world; there is no companion for it among all the lakes. The
+shores of it are of glass, and the bottom of it. In it are great fish
+having golden and scarlet scales, and they swim to and fro. Here it is
+the wont of the eighty-second Nehemoth (who rules in the city today) to
+come, after the dusk has fallen, and sit by the lake alone, and at this
+hour eight hundred slaves go down by steps through caverns into vaults
+beneath the lake. Four hundred of them carrying purple lights march one
+behind the other, from east to west, and four hundred carrying green
+lights march one behind the other, from west to east. The two lines
+cross and re-cross each other in and out as the slaves go round and
+round, and the fearful fish flash up and down and to and fro.’
+
+But upon that traveller speaking night descended, solemn and cold, and
+we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and lay down upon the sand in
+the sight of the astral sisters of Babbulkund. And all that night the
+desert said many things, softly and in a whisper, but I knew not what
+he said. Only the sand knew and arose and was troubled and lay down
+again, and the wind knew. Then, as the hours of the night went by,
+these two discovered the foot-tracks wherewith we had disturbed the
+holy desert, and they troubled over them and covered them up; and then
+the wind lay down and the sand rested. Then the wind arose again and
+the sand danced. This they did many times. And all the while the desert
+whispered what I shall not know.
+
+Then I slept awhile and awoke just before sunrise, very cold. Suddenly
+the sun leapt up and flamed upon our faces; we all threw off our
+blankets and stood up. Then we took food, and afterwards started
+southwards, and in the heat of the day rested, and afterwards pushed
+on again. And all the while the desert remained the same, like a dream
+that will not cease to trouble a tired sleeper.
+
+And often travellers passed us in the desert, coming from the City of
+Marvel, and there was a light and a glory in their eyes from having
+seen Babbulkund.
+
+That evening, at sunset, another traveller neared us, and we hailed
+him, saying:
+
+‘Wilt thou eat and drink with us, seeing that all men are brothers in
+the desert?’
+
+And he descended from his camel and sat by us and said:
+
+‘When morning shines on the colossus Neb and Neb speaks, at once the
+musicians of King Nehemoth in Babbulkund awake.
+
+‘At first their fingers wander over their golden harps, or they stroke
+idly their violins. Clearer and clearer the note of each instrument
+ascends like larks arising from the dew, till suddenly they all blend
+together and a new melody is born. Thus, every morning, the musicians
+of King Nehemoth make a new marvel in the City of Marvel; for these
+are no common musicians, but masters of melody, raided by conquest
+long since, and carried away in ships from the Isles of Song. And, at
+the sound of the music, Nehemoth awakes in the eastern chamber of his
+palace, which is carved in the form of a great crescent, four miles
+long, on the northern side of the city. Full in the windows of its
+eastern chamber the sun rises, and full in the windows of its western
+chamber the sun sets.
+
+‘When Nehemoth awakes he summons slaves who bring a palanquin with
+bells, which the King enters, having lightly robed. Then the slaves run
+and bear him to the onyx Chamber of the Bath, with the sound of small
+bells ringing as they run. And when Nehemoth emerges thence, bathed and
+anointed, the slaves run on with their ringing palanquin and bear him
+to the Orient Chamber of Banquets, where the King takes the first meal
+of the day. Thence, through the great white corridor whose windows all
+face sunwards, Nehemoth, in his palanquin, passes on to the Audience
+Chamber of Embassies from the North, which is all decked with Northern
+wares.
+
+‘All about it are ornaments of amber from the North and carven chalices
+of the dark brown Northern crystal, and on its floors lie furs from
+Baltic shores.
+
+‘In adjoining chambers are stored the wonted food of the hardy Northern
+men, and the strong wine of the North, pale but terrible. Therein the
+King receives barbarian princes from the frigid lands. Thence the
+slaves bear him swiftly to the Audience Chamber of Embassies from the
+East, where the walls are of turquoise, studded with the rubies of
+Ceylon, where the gods are the gods of the East, where all the hangings
+have been devised in the gorgeous heart of Ind, and where all the
+carvings have been wrought with the cunning of the isles. Here, if a
+caravan hath chanced to have come in from Ind or from Cathay, it is
+the King’s wont to converse awhile with Moguls or Mandarins, for from
+the East come the arts and knowledge of the world, and the converse
+of their people is polite. Thus Nehemoth passes on through the other
+Audience Chambers and receives, perhaps, some Sheikhs of the Arab
+folk who have crossed the great desert from the West, or receives an
+embassy sent to do him homage from the shy jungle people to the South.
+And all the while the slaves with the ringing palanquin run westwards,
+following the sun, and ever the sun shines straight into the chamber
+where Nehemoth sits, and all the while the music from one or other of
+his bands of musicians comes tinkling to his ears. But when the middle
+of the day draws near, the slaves run to the cool groves that lie along
+the verandahs on the northern side of the palace, forsaking the sun,
+and as the heat overcomes the genius of the musicians, one by one their
+hands fall from their instruments, till at last all melody ceases. At
+this moment Nehemoth falls asleep, and the slaves put the palanquin
+down and lie down beside it. At this hour the city becomes quite
+still, and the palace of Nehemoth and the tombs of the Pharaohs of old
+face to the sunlight, all alike in silence. Even the jewellers in the
+market-place, selling gems to princes, cease from their bargaining and
+cease to sing; for in Babbulkund the vendor of rubies sings the song of
+the ruby, and the vendor of sapphires sings the song of the sapphire,
+and each stone hath its song, so that a man, by his song, proclaims and
+makes known his wares.
+
+‘But all these sounds cease at the meridian hour, the jewellers in the
+market-place lie down in what shadow they can find, and the princes
+go back to the cool places in their palaces, and a great hush in
+the gleaming air hangs over Babbulkund. But in the cool of the late
+afternoon, one of the King’s musicians will awake from dreaming of his
+home and will pass his fingers, perhaps, over the strings of his harp
+and, with the music, some memory may arise of the wind in the glens of
+the mountains that stand in the Isles of Song. Then the musician will
+wrench great cries out of the soul of his harp for the sake of the old
+memory, and his fellows will awake and all make a song of home, woven
+of sayings told in the harbour when the ships came in, and of tales in
+the cottages about the people of old time. One by one the other bands
+of musicians will take up the song, and Babbulkund, City of Marvel,
+will throb with this marvel anew. Just now Nehemoth awakes, the slaves
+leap to their feet and bear the palanquin to the outer side of the
+great crescent palace between the south and the west, to behold the sun
+again. The palanquin, with its ringing bells, goes round once more;
+the voices of the jewellers sing again, in the market-place, the song
+of the emerald, the song of the sapphire; men talk on the housetops,
+beggars wail in the streets, the musicians bend to their work, all the
+sounds blend together into one murmur, the voice of Babbulkund speaking
+at evening. Lower and lower sinks the sun, till Nehemoth, following
+it, comes with his panting slaves to the great purple garden of which
+surely thine own country has its songs, from wherever thou art come.
+
+‘There he alights from his palanquin and goes up to a throne of ivory
+set in the garden’s midst, facing full westwards, and sits there alone,
+long regarding the sunlight until it is quite gone. At this hour
+trouble comes into the face of Nehemoth. Men have heard him muttering
+at the time of sunset: “Even I too, even I too.” Thus do King Nehemoth
+and the sun make their glorious ambits about Babbulkund.
+
+‘A little later, when the stars come out to envy the beauty of the City
+of Marvel, the King walks to another part of the garden and sits in an
+alcove of opal all alone by the marge of the sacred lake. This is the
+lake whose shores and floors are of glass, which is lit from beneath
+by slaves with purple lights and with green lights intermingling, and
+is one of the seven wonders of Babbulkund. Three of the wonders are
+in the city’s midst and four are at her gates. There is the lake, of
+which I tell thee, and the purple garden of which I have told thee and
+which is a wonder even to the stars, and there is Ong Zwarba, of which
+I shall tell thee also. And the wonders at the gates are these. At the
+eastern gate Neb. And at the northern gate the wonder of the river and
+the arches, for the River of Myth, which becomes one with the Waters of
+Fable in the desert outside the city, floats under a gate of pure gold,
+rejoicing, and under many arches fantastically carven that are one with
+either bank. The marvel at the western gate is the marvel of Annolith
+and the dog Voth. Annolith sits outside the western gate facing towards
+the city. He is higher than any of the towers or palaces, for his
+head was carved from the summit of the old hill; he hath two eyes of
+sapphire wherewith he regards Babbulkund, and the wonder of the eyes is
+that they are today in the same sockets wherein they glowed when first
+the world began, only the marble that covered them has been carven away
+and the light of day let in and the sight of the envious stars. Larger
+than a lion is the dog Voth beside him; every hair is carven upon the
+back of Voth, his war hackles are erected and his teeth are bared. All
+the Nehemoths have worshipped the god Annolith, but all their people
+pray to the dog Voth, for the law of the land is that none but a
+Nehemoth may worship the god Annolith. The marvel at the southern gate
+is the marvel of the jungle, for he comes with all his wild untravelled
+sea of darkness and trees and tigers and sunward-aspiring orchids right
+through a marble gate in the city wall and enters the city, and there
+widens and holds a space in its midst of many miles across. Moreover,
+he is older than the City of Marvel, for he dwelt long since in one of
+the valleys of the mountain which Nehemoth, first of Pharaohs, carved
+into Babbulkund.
+
+‘Now the opal alcove in which the King sits at evening by the lake
+stands at the edge of the jungle, and the climbing orchids of the
+jungle have long since crept from their homes through clefts of the
+opal alcove, lured by the lights of the lake, and now bloom there
+exultingly. Near to this alcove are the hareems of Nehemoth.
+
+‘The King hath four hareems—one for the stalwart women from the
+mountains to the north, one for the dark and furtive jungle women, one
+for the desert women that have wandering souls and pine in Babbulkund,
+and one for the princesses of his own kith, whose brown cheeks blush
+with the blood of ancient Pharaohs and who exult with Babbulkund in
+her surpassing beauty, and who know nought of the desert or the jungle
+or the bleak hills to the north. Quite unadorned and clad in simple
+garments go all the kith of Nehemoth, for they know well that he
+grows weary of pomp. Unadorned all save one, the Princess Linderith,
+who weareth Ong Zwarba and the three lesser gems of the sea. Such a
+stone is Ong Zwarba that there are none like it even in the turban of
+Nehemoth nor in all the sanctuaries of the sea. The same god that made
+Linderith made long ago Ong Zwarba; she and Ong Zwarba shine together
+with one light, and beside this marvellous stone gleam the three lesser
+ones of the sea.
+
+‘Now when the King sitteth in his opal alcove by the sacred lake with
+the orchids blooming around him all sounds are become still. The sound
+of the tramping of the weary slaves as they go round and round never
+comes to the surface. Long since the musicians sleep, and their hands
+have fallen dumb upon their instruments, and the voices in the city
+have died away. Perhaps a sigh of one of the desert women has become
+half a song, or on a hot night in summer one of the women of the
+hills sings softly a song of snow; all night long in the midst of the
+purple garden sings one nightingale; all else is still; the stars that
+look on Babbulkund arise and set, the cold unhappy moon drifts lonely
+through them, the night wears on; at last the dark figure of Nehemoth,
+eighty-second of his line, rises and moves stealthily away.’
+
+The traveller ceased to speak. For a long time the clear stars, sisters
+of Babbulkund, had shone upon him speaking, the desert wind had arisen
+and whispered to the sand, and the sand had long gone secretly to and
+fro; none of us had moved, none of us had fallen asleep, not so much
+from wonder at his tale as from the thought that we ourselves in two
+days’ time should see that wondrous city. Then we wrapped our blankets
+around us and lay down with our feet towards the embers of our fire and
+instantly were asleep, and in our dreams we multiplied the fame of the
+City of Marvel.
+
+The sun arose and flamed upon our faces, and all the desert glinted
+with its light. Then we stood up and prepared the morning meal, and,
+when we had eaten, the traveller departed. And we commended his soul
+to the god of the land whereto he went, of the land of his home to
+the northward, and he commended our souls to the God of the people of
+the land wherefrom we had come. Then a traveller overtook us going on
+foot; he wore a brown cloak that was all in rags and he seemed to have
+been walking all night, and he walked hurriedly but appeared weary, so
+we offered him food and drink, of which he partook thankfully. When
+we asked him where he was going, he answered ‘Babbulkund.’ Then we
+offered him a camel upon which to ride, for we said, ‘We also go to
+Babbulkund.’ But he answered strangely:
+
+‘Nay, pass on before me, for it is a sore thing never to have seen
+Babbulkund, having lived while yet she stood. Pass on before me and
+behold her, and then flee away at once, returning northwards.’
+
+Then, though we understood him not, we left him, for he was insistent,
+and passed on our journey southwards through the desert, and we came
+before the middle of the day to an oasis of palm trees standing by a
+well and there we gave water to the haughty camels and replenished our
+water-bottles and soothed our eyes with the sight of green things and
+tarried for many hours in the shade. Some of the men slept, but of
+those that remained awake each man sang softly the songs of his own
+country, telling of Babbulkund. When the afternoon was far spent we
+travelled a little way southwards, and went on through the cool evening
+until the sun fell low and we encamped, and as we sat in our encampment
+the man in rags overtook us, having travelled all the day, and we gave
+him food and drink again, and in the twilight he spoke, saying:
+
+‘I am the servant of the Lord the God of my people, and I go to do
+his work on Babbulkund. She is the most beautiful city in the world;
+there hath been none like her, even the stars of God go envious of her
+beauty. She is all white, yet with streaks of pink that pass through
+her streets and houses like flames in the white mind of a sculptor,
+like desire in Paradise. She hath been carved of old out of a holy
+hill, no slaves wrought the City of Marvel, but artists toiling at
+the work they loved. They took no pattern from the houses of men, but
+each man wrought what his inner eye had seen and carved in marble the
+visions of his dream. All over the roof of one of the palace chambers
+winged lions flit like bats, the size of every one is the size of the
+lions of God, and the wings are larger than any wing created; they are
+one above the other more than a man can number, they are all carven
+out of one block of marble, the chamber itself is hollowed from it,
+and it is borne aloft upon the carven branches of a grove of clustered
+tree-ferns wrought by the hand of some jungle mason that loved the
+tall fern well. Over the River of Myth, which is one with the Waters
+of Fable, go bridges, fashioned like the wisteria tree and like the
+drooping laburnum, and a hundred others of wonderful devices, the
+desire of the souls of masons a long while dead. Oh! very beautiful is
+white Babbulkund, very beautiful she is, but proud; and the Lord the
+God of my people hath seen her in her pride, and looking towards her
+hath seen the prayers of Nehemoth going up to the abomination Annolith
+and all the people following after Voth. She is very beautiful,
+Babbulkund; alas that I may not bless her. I could live always on one
+of her inner terraces looking on the mysterious jungle in her midst and
+the heavenward faces of the orchids that, clambering from the darkness,
+behold the sun. I could love Babbulkund with a great love, yet am I the
+servant of the Lord the God of my people, and the King hath sinned unto
+the abomination Annolith, and the people lust exceedingly for Voth.
+Alas for thee, Babbulkund, alas that I may not even now turn back,
+for tomorrow I must prophesy against thee and cry out against thee,
+Babbulkund. But ye travellers that have entreated me hospitably, rise
+and pass on with your camels, for I can tarry no longer, and I go to do
+the work on Babbulkund of the Lord the God of my people. Go now and see
+the beauty of Babbulkund before I cry out against her, and then flee
+swiftly northwards.’
+
+A smouldering fragment fell in upon our camp fire and sent a strange
+light into the eyes of the man in rags. He rose at once, and his
+tattered cloak swirled up with him like a great wing; he said no more,
+but turned round from us instantly southwards, and strode away into
+the darkness towards Babbulkund. Then a hush fell upon our encampment,
+and the smell of the tobacco of those lands arose. When the last flame
+died down in our camp fire I fell asleep, but my rest was troubled by
+shifting dreams of doom.
+
+Morning came, and our guides told us that we should come to the city
+ere nightfall. Again we passed southwards through the changeless
+desert; sometimes we met travellers coming from Babbulkund, with the
+beauty of its marvels still fresh in their eyes.
+
+When we encamped near the middle of the day we saw a great number of
+people on foot coming towards us running, from the southwards. These we
+hailed when they were come near, saying, ‘What of Babbulkund?’
+
+They answered: ‘We are not of the race of the people of Babbulkund, but
+were captured in youth and taken away from the hills that are to the
+northward. Now we have all seen in visions of the stillness the Lord
+the God of our people calling to us from His hills, and therefore we
+all flee northwards. But in Babbulkund King Nehemoth hath been troubled
+in the nights by unkingly dreams of doom, and none may interpret what
+the dreams portend. Now this is the dream that King Nehemoth dreamed
+on the first night of his dreaming. He saw move through the stillness
+a bird all black, and beneath the beatings of his wings Babbulkund
+gloomed and darkened; and after him flew a bird all white, beneath
+the beatings of whose wings Babbulkund gleamed and shone; and there
+flew by four more birds alternately black and white. And, as the black
+ones passed Babbulkund darkened, and when the white ones appeared her
+streets and houses shone. But after the sixth bird there came no more,
+and Babbulkund vanished from her place, and there was only the empty
+desert where she had stood, and the rivers Oonrana and Plegáthanees
+mourning alone. Next morning all the prophets of the King gathered
+before their abominations and questioned them of the dream, and the
+abominations spake not. But when the second night stepped down from the
+halls of God, dowered with many stars, King Nehemoth dreamed again;
+and in this dream King Nehemoth saw four birds only, black and white
+alternately as before. And Babbulkund darkened again as the black ones
+passed, and shone when the white came by; only after the four birds
+came no more, and Babbulkund vanished from her place, leaving only the
+forgetful desert and the mourning rivers.
+
+‘Still the abominations spake not, and none could interpret the dream.
+And when the third night came forth from the divine halls of her home
+dowered like her sisters, again King Nehemoth dreamed. And he saw a
+bird all black go by again, beneath whom Babbulkund darkened, and
+then a white bird and Babbulkund shone; and after them came no more,
+and Babbulkund passed away. And the golden day appeared, dispelling
+dreams, and still the abominations were silent, and the King’s prophets
+answered not to portend the omen of the dream. One prophet only spake
+before the King, saying: “The sable birds, O King, are the nights, and
+the white birds are the days. . .” This thing the King had feared, and
+he arose and smote the prophet with his sword, whose soul went crying
+away and had to do no more with nights and days.
+
+‘It was last night that the King dreamed his third dream, and this
+morning we fled away from Babbulkund. A great heat lies over it, and
+the orchids of the jungle droop their heads. All night long the women
+in the hareem of the North have wailed horribly for their hills. A fear
+hath fallen upon the city, and a boding. Twice hath Nehemoth gone to
+worship Annolith, and all the people have prostrated themselves before
+Voth. Thrice the horologers have looked into the great crystal globe
+wherein are foretold all happenings to be, and thrice the globe was
+blank. Yea, though they went a fourth time yet was no vision revealed;
+and the people’s voice is hushed in Babbulkund.’
+
+Soon the travellers arose and pushed on northwards again, leaving us
+wondering. Through the heat of the day we rested as well as we might,
+but the air was motionless and sultry and the camels ill at ease.
+The Arabs said that it boded a desert storm, and that a great wind
+would arise full of sand. So we arose in the afternoon, and travelled
+swiftly, hoping to come to shelter before the storm. And the air burned
+in the stillness between the baked desert and the glaring sky.
+
+Suddenly a wind arose out of the South, blowing from Babbulkund, and
+the sand lifted and went by in great shapes, all whispering. And the
+wind blew violently, and wailed as it blew, and hundreds of sandy
+shapes went towering by, and there were little cries among them and the
+sounds of a passing away. Soon the wind sank quite suddenly, and its
+cries died, and the panic ceased among the driven sands. And when the
+storm departed the air was cool, and the terrible sultriness and the
+boding were passed away, and the camels had ease among them. And the
+Arabs said that the storm which was to be had been, as was willed of
+old by God.
+
+The sun set and the gloaming came, and we neared the junction of
+Oonrana and Plegáthanees, but in the darkness discerned not Babbulkund.
+We pushed on hurriedly to reach the city ere nightfall, and came to the
+junction of the River of Myth where he meets with the Waters of Fable,
+and still saw not Babbulkund. All round us lay the sand and rocks of
+the unchanging desert, save to the southwards where the jungle stood
+with its orchids facing skywards. Then we perceived that we had arrived
+too late, and that her doom had come to Babbulkund; and by the river in
+the empty desert on the sand the man in rags was seated, with his face
+hidden in his hands, weeping bitterly.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Thus passed away in the hour of her iniquities before Annolith, in the
+two thousand and thirty-second year of her being, in the six thousand
+and fiftieth year of the building of the World, Babbulkund, City of
+Marvel, sometime called by those that hated her City of the Dog, but
+hourly mourned in Araby and Ind and wide through jungle and desert;
+leaving no memorial in stone to show that she had been, but remembered
+with an abiding love, in spite of the anger of God, by all that knew
+her beauty, whereof still they sing.
+
+
+
+
+The Kith of the Elf Folk
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+The north wind was blowing, and red and golden the last days of Autumn
+were streaming hence. Solemn and cold over the marshes arose the
+evening.
+
+It became very still.
+
+Then the last pigeon went home to the trees on the dry land in the
+distance, whose shapes already had taken upon themselves a mystery in
+the haze.
+
+Then all was still again.
+
+As the light faded and the haze deepened, mystery crept nearer from
+every side.
+
+Then the green plover came in crying, and all alighted.
+
+And again it became still, save when one of the plover arose and flew a
+little way uttering the cry of the waste. And hushed and silent became
+the earth, expecting the first star. Then the duck came in, and the
+widgeon, company by company: and all the light of day faded out of the
+sky saving one red band of light. Across the light appeared, black and
+huge, the wings of a flock of geese beating up wind to the marshes.
+These, too, went down among the rushes.
+
+Then the stars appeared and shone in the stillness, and there was
+silence in the great spaces of the night.
+
+Suddenly the bells of the cathedral in the marshes broke out, calling
+to evensong.
+
+Eight centuries ago on the edge of the marsh men had built the huge
+cathedral, or it may have been seven centuries ago, or perhaps nine—it
+was all one to the Wild Things.
+
+So evensong was held, and candles lighted, and the lights through the
+windows shone red and green in the water, and the sound of the organ
+went roaring over the marshes. But from the deep and perilous places,
+edged with bright mosses, the Wild Things came leaping up to dance on
+the reflection of the stars, and over their heads as they danced the
+marsh-lights rose and fell.
+
+The Wild Things are somewhat human in appearance, only all brown
+of skin and barely two feet high. Their ears are pointed like the
+squirrel’s, only far larger, and they leap to prodigious heights.
+They live all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes, but at
+night they come up and dance. Each Wild Thing has over its head a
+marsh-light, which moves as the Wild Thing moves; they have no souls,
+and cannot die, and are of the kith of the Elf-folk.
+
+All night they dance over the marshes, treading upon the reflection
+of the stars (for the bare surface of the water will not hold them by
+itself); but when the stars begin to pale, they sink down one by one
+into the pools of their home. Or if they tarry longer, sitting upon
+the rushes, their bodies fade from view as the marsh-fires pale in the
+light, and by daylight none may see the Wild Things of the kith of the
+Elf-folk. Neither may any see them even at night unless they were born,
+as I was, in the hour of dusk, just at the moment when the first star
+appears.
+
+Now, on the night that I tell of, a little Wild Thing had gone drifting
+over the waste, till it came right up to the walls of the cathedral
+and danced upon the images of the coloured saints as they lay in the
+water among the reflection of the stars. And as it leaped in its
+fantastic dance, it saw through the painted windows to where the people
+prayed, and heard the organ roaring over the marshes. The sound of the
+organ roared over the marshes, but the song and prayers of the people
+streamed up from the cathedral’s highest tower like thin gold chains,
+and reached to Paradise, and up and down them went the angels from
+Paradise to the people, and from the people to Paradise again.
+
+Then something akin to discontent troubled the Wild Thing for the first
+time since the making of the marshes; and the soft grey ooze and the
+chill of the deep water seemed to be not enough, nor the first arrival
+from northwards of the tumultuous geese, nor the wild rejoicing of the
+wings of the wildfowl when every feather sings, nor the wonder of the
+calm ice that comes when the snipe depart and beards the rushes with
+frost and clothes the hushed waste with a mysterious haze where the
+sun goes red and low, nor even the dance of the Wild Things in the
+marvellous night; and the little Wild Thing longed to have a soul, and
+to go and worship God.
+
+And when evensong was over and the lights were out, it went back crying
+to its kith.
+
+But on the next night, as soon as the images of the stars appeared in
+the water, it went leaping away from star to star to the farthest edge
+of the marshlands, where a great wood grew where dwelt the Oldest of
+the Wild Things.
+
+And it found the Oldest of Wild Things sitting under a tree, sheltering
+itself from the moon.
+
+And the little Wild Thing said: ‘I want to have a soul to worship God,
+and to know the meaning of music, and to see the inner beauty of the
+marshlands and to imagine Paradise.’
+
+And the Oldest of the Wild Things said to it: ‘What have we to do with
+God? We are only Wild Things, and of the kith of the Elf-folk.’
+
+But it only answered, ‘I want to have a soul.’
+
+Then the Oldest of the Wild Things said: ‘I have no soul to give you;
+but if you got a soul, one day you would have to die, and if you knew
+the meaning of music you would learn the meaning of sorrow, and it is
+better to be a Wild Thing and not to die.’
+
+So it went weeping away.
+
+But they that were kin to the Elf-folk were sorry for the little Wild
+Thing; and though the Wild Things cannot sorrow long, having no souls
+to sorrow with, yet they felt for awhile a soreness where their souls
+should be, when they saw the grief of their comrade.
+
+So the kith of the Elf-folk went abroad by night to make a soul for the
+little Wild Thing. And they went over the marshes till they came to the
+high fields among the flowers and grasses. And there they gathered a
+large piece of gossamer that the spider had laid by twilight; and the
+dew was on it.
+
+Into this dew had shone all the lights of the long banks of the ribbed
+sky, as all the colours changed in the restful spaces of evening. And
+over it the marvellous night had gleamed with all its stars.
+
+Then the Wild Things went with their dew-bespangled gossamer down to
+the edge of their home. And there they gathered a piece of the grey
+mist that lies by night over the marshlands. And into it they put
+the melody of the waste that is borne up and down the marshes in the
+evening on the wings of the golden plover. And they put into it, too,
+the mournful song that the reeds are compelled to sing before the
+presence of the arrogant North Wind. Then each of the Wild Things gave
+some treasured memory of the old marshes, ‘For we can spare it,’ they
+said. And to all this they added a few images of the stars that they
+gathered out of the water. Still the soul that the kith of the Elf-folk
+were making had no life.
+
+Then they put into it the low voices of two lovers that went walking
+in the night, wandering late alone. And after that they waited for the
+dawn. And the queenly dawn appeared, and the marsh-lights of the Wild
+Things paled in the glare, and their bodies faded from view; and still
+they waited by the marsh’s edge. And to them waiting came over field
+and marsh, from the ground and out of the sky, the myriad song of the
+birds.
+
+This, too, the Wild Things put into the piece of haze that they
+had gathered in the marshlands, and wrapped it all up in their
+dew-bespangled gossamer. Then the soul lived.
+
+And there it lay in the hands of the Wild Things no larger than a
+hedgehog; and wonderful lights were in it, green and blue; and they
+changed ceaselessly, going round and round, and in the grey midst of it
+was a purple flare.
+
+And the next night they came to the little Wild Thing and showed her
+the gleaming soul. And they said to her: ‘If you must have a soul and
+go and worship God, and become a mortal and die, place this to your
+left breast a little above the heart, and it will enter and you will
+become a human. But if you take it you can never be rid of it to become
+immortal again unless you pluck it out and give it to another; and we
+will not take it, and most of the humans have a soul already. And if
+you cannot find a human without a soul you will one day die, and your
+soul cannot go to Paradise, because it was only made in the marshes.’
+
+Far away the little Wild Thing saw the cathedral windows alight for
+evensong, and the song of the people mounting up to Paradise, and all
+the angels going up and down. So it bid farewell with tears and thanks
+to the Wild Things of the kith of Elf-folk, and went leaping away
+towards the green dry land, holding the soul in its hands.
+
+And the Wild Things were sorry that it had gone, but could not be sorry
+long, because they had no souls.
+
+At the marsh’s edge the little Wild Thing gazed for some moments over
+the water to where the marsh-fires were leaping up and down, and then
+pressed the soul against its left breast a little above the heart.
+
+Instantly it became a young and beautiful woman, who was cold and
+frightened. She clad herself somehow with bundles of reeds, and went
+towards the lights of a house that stood close by. And she pushed open
+the door and entered, and found a farmer and a farmer’s wife sitting
+over their supper.
+
+And the farmer’s wife took the little Wild Thing with the soul of the
+marshes up to her room, and clothed her and braided her hair, and
+brought her down again, and gave her the first food that she had ever
+eaten. Then the farmer’s wife asked many questions.
+
+‘Where have you come from?’ she said.
+
+‘Over the marshes.’
+
+‘From what direction?’ said the farmer’s wife.
+
+‘South,’ said the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
+
+‘But none can come over the marshes from the south,’ said the farmer’s
+wife.
+
+‘No, they can’t do that,’ said the farmer.
+
+‘I lived in the marshes.’
+
+‘Who are you?’ asked the farmer’s wife.
+
+‘I am a Wild Thing, and have found a soul in the marshes, and we are
+kin to the Elf-folk.’
+
+Talking it over afterwards, the farmer and his wife agreed that she
+must be a gipsy who had been lost, and that she was queer with hunger
+and exposure.
+
+So that night the little Wild Thing slept in the farmer’s house, but
+her new soul stayed awake the whole night long dreaming of the beauty
+of the marshes.
+
+As soon as dawn came over the waste and shone on the farmer’s house,
+she looked from the window towards the glittering waters, and saw the
+inner beauty of the marsh. For the Wild Things only love the marsh and
+know its haunts, but now she perceived the mystery of its distances
+and the glamour of its perilous pools, with their fair and deadly
+mosses, and felt the marvel of the North Wind who comes dominant out of
+unknown icy lands, and the wonder of that ebb and flow of life when the
+wildfowl whirl in at evening to the marshlands and at dawn pass out to
+sea. And she knew that over her head above the farmer’s house stretched
+wide Paradise, where perhaps God was now imagining a sunrise while
+angels played low on lutes, and the sun came rising up on the world
+below to gladden fields and marsh.
+
+And all that heaven thought, the marsh thought too; for the blue of the
+marsh was as the blue of heaven, and the great cloud shapes in heaven
+became the shapes in the marsh, and through each ran momentary rivers
+of purple, errant between banks of gold. And the stalwart army of reeds
+appeared out of the gloom with all their pennons waving as far as the
+eye could see. And from another window she saw the vast cathedral
+gathering its ponderous strength together, and lifting it up in towers
+out of the marshlands.
+
+She said, ‘I will never, never leave the marsh.’
+
+An hour later she dressed with great difficulty and went down to eat
+the second meal of her life. The farmer and his wife were kindly folk,
+and taught her how to eat.
+
+‘I suppose the gipsies don’t have knives and forks,’ one said to the
+other afterwards.
+
+After breakfast the farmer went and saw the Dean, who lived near his
+cathedral, and presently returned and brought back to the Dean’s house
+the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
+
+‘This is the lady,’ said the farmer. ‘This is Dean Murnith.’ Then he
+went away.
+
+‘Ah,’ said the Dean, ‘I understand you were lost the other night in the
+marshes. It was a terrible night to be lost in the marshes.’
+
+‘I love the marshes,’ said the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
+
+‘Indeed! How old are you?’ said the Dean.
+
+‘I don’t know,’ she answered.
+
+‘You must know about how old you are,’ he said.
+
+‘Oh, about ninety,’ she said, ‘or more.’
+
+‘Ninety years!’ exclaimed the Dean.
+
+‘No, ninety centuries,’ she said; ‘I am as old as the marshes.’
+
+Then she told her story—how she had longed to be a human and go and
+worship God, and have a soul and see the beauty of the world, and how
+all the Wild Things had made her a soul of gossamer and mist and music
+and strange memories.
+
+‘But if this is true,’ said Dean Murnith, ‘this is very wrong. God
+cannot have intended you to have a soul.
+
+‘What is your name?’
+
+‘I have no name,’ she answered.
+
+‘We must find a Christian name and a surname for you. What would you
+like to be called?’
+
+‘Song of the Rushes,’ she said.
+
+‘That won’t do at all,’ said the Dean.
+
+‘Then I would like to be called Terrible North Wind, or Star in the
+Waters,’ she said.
+
+‘No, no, no,’ said Dean Murnith; ‘that is quite impossible. We could
+call you Miss Rush if you like. How would Mary Rush do? Perhaps you had
+better have another name—say Mary Jane Rush.’
+
+So the little Wild Thing with the soul of the marshes took the names
+that were offered her, and became Mary Jane Rush.
+
+‘And we must find something for you to do,’ said Dean Murnith.
+‘Meanwhile we can give you a room here.’
+
+‘I don’t want to do anything,’ replied Mary Jane; ‘I want to worship
+God in the cathedral and live beside the marshes.’
+
+Then Mrs. Murnith came in, and for the rest of that day Mary Jane
+stayed at the house of the Dean.
+
+And there with her new soul she perceived the beauty of the world; for
+it came grey and level out of misty distances, and widened into grassy
+fields and ploughlands right up to the edge of an old gabled town;
+and solitary in the fields far off an ancient windmill stood, and his
+honest hand-made sails went round and round in the free East Anglian
+winds. Close by, the gabled houses leaned out over the streets, planted
+fair upon sturdy timbers that grew in the olden time, all glorying
+among themselves upon their beauty. And out of them, buttress by
+buttress, growing and going upwards, aspiring tower by tower, rose the
+cathedral.
+
+And she saw the people moving in the streets all leisurely and slow,
+and unseen among them, whispering to each other, unheard by living men
+and concerned only with bygone things, drifted the ghosts of very long
+ago. And wherever the streets ran eastwards, wherever were gaps in the
+houses, always there broke into view the sight of the great marshes,
+like to some bar of music weird and strange that haunts a melody,
+arising again and again, played on the violin by one musician only, who
+plays no other bar, and he is swart and lank about the hair and bearded
+about the lips, and his moustache droops long and low, and no one knows
+the land from which he comes.
+
+All these were good things for a new soul to see.
+
+Then the sun set over green fields and ploughland and the night came
+up. One by one the merry lights of cheery lamp-lit windows took their
+stations in the solemn night.
+
+Then the bells rang, far up in a cathedral tower, and their melody fell
+on the roofs of the old houses and poured over their eaves until the
+streets were full, and then flooded away over green fields and plough,
+till it came to the sturdy mill and brought the miller trudging to
+evensong, and far away eastwards and seawards the sound rang out over
+the remoter marshes. And it was all as yesterday to the old ghosts in
+the streets.
+
+Then the Dean’s wife took Mary Jane to evening service, and she saw
+three hundred candles filling all the aisle with light. But sturdy
+pillars stood there in unlit vastnesses; great colonnades going away
+into the gloom, where evening and morning, year in year out, they did
+their work in the dark, holding the cathedral roof aloft. And it was
+stiller than the marshes are still when the ice has come and the wind
+that brought it has fallen.
+
+Suddenly into this stillness rushed the sound of the organ, roaring,
+and presently the people prayed and sang.
+
+No longer could Mary Jane see their prayers ascending like thin gold
+chains, for that was but an elfin fancy, but she imagined clear in her
+new soul the seraphs passing in the ways of Paradise, and the angels
+changing guard to watch the World by night.
+
+When the Dean had finished service, a young curate, Mr. Millings, went
+up into the pulpit.
+
+He spoke of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus: and Mary Jane was
+glad that there were rivers having such names, and heard with wonder of
+Nineveh, that great city, and many things strange and new.
+
+And the light of the candles shone on the curate’s fair hair, and his
+voice went ringing down the aisle, and Mary Jane rejoiced that he was
+there.
+
+But when his voice stopped she felt a sudden loneliness, such as she
+had not felt since the making of the marshes; for the Wild Things never
+are lonely and never unhappy, but dance all night on the reflection of
+the stars, and having no souls, desire nothing more.
+
+After the collection was made, before anyone moved to go, Mary Jane
+walked up the aisle to Mr. Millings.
+
+‘I love you,’ she said.
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Nobody sympathised with Mary Jane.
+
+‘So unfortunate for Mr. Millings,’ every one said; ‘such a promising
+young man.’
+
+Mary Jane was sent away to a great manufacturing city of the Midlands,
+where work had been found for her in a cloth factory. And there
+was nothing in that town that was good for a soul to see. For it
+did not know that beauty was to be desired; so it made many things
+by machinery, and became hurried in all its ways, and boasted its
+superiority over other cities and became richer and richer, and there
+was none to pity it.
+
+In this city Mary Jane had had lodgings found for her near the factory.
+
+At six o’clock on those November mornings, about the time that, far
+away from the city, the wildfowl rose up out of the calm marshes and
+passed to the troubled spaces of the sea, at six o’clock the factory
+uttered a prolonged howl and gathered the workers together, and there
+they worked, saving two hours for food, the whole of the daylit hours
+and into the dark till the bells tolled six again.
+
+There Mary Jane worked with other girls in a long dreary room, where
+giants sat pounding wool into a long thread-like strip with iron,
+rasping hands. And all day long they roared as they sat at their
+soulless work. But the work of Mary Jane was not with these, only their
+roar was ever in her ears as their clattering iron limbs went to and
+fro.
+
+Her work was to tend a creature smaller, but infinitely more cunning.
+
+It took the strip of wool that the giants had threshed, and whirled it
+round and round until it had twisted it into hard thin thread. Then it
+would make a clutch with fingers of steel at the thread that it had
+gathered, and waddle away about five yards and come back with more.
+
+It had mastered all the subtlety of skilled workers, and had gradually
+displaced them; one thing only it could not do, it was unable to pick
+up the ends if a piece of the thread broke, in order to tie them
+together again. For this a human soul was required, and it was Mary
+Jane’s business to pick up broken ends; and the moment she placed them
+together the busy soulless creature tied them for itself.
+
+All here was ugly; even the green wool as it whirled round and round
+was neither the green of the grass nor yet the green of the rushes, but
+a sorry muddy green that befitted a sullen city under a murky sky.
+
+When she looked out over the roofs of the town, there too was ugliness;
+and well the houses knew it, for with hideous stucco they aped in
+grotesque mimicry the pillars and temples of old Greece, pretending to
+one another to be that which they were not. And emerging from these
+houses and going in, and seeing the pretence of paint and stucco year
+after year until it all peeled away, the souls of the poor owners of
+those houses sought to be other souls until they grew weary of it.
+
+At evening Mary Jane went back to her lodgings. Only then, after the
+dark had fallen, could the soul of Mary Jane perceive any beauty in
+that city, when the lamps were lit and here and there a star shone
+through the smoke. Then she would have gone abroad and beheld the
+night, but this the old woman to whom she was confided would not let
+her do. And the days multiplied themselves by seven and became weeks,
+and the weeks passed by, and all days were the same. And all the while
+the soul of Mary Jane was crying for beautiful things, and found not
+one, saving on Sundays, when she went to church, and left it to find
+the city greyer than before.
+
+One day she decided that it was better to be a wild thing in the lovely
+marshes, than to have a soul that cried for beautiful things and found
+not one. From that day she determined to be rid of her soul, so she
+told her story to one of the factory girls, and said to her:
+
+‘The other girls are poorly clad and they do soulless work; surely some
+of them have no souls and would take mine.’
+
+But the factory girl said to her: ‘All the poor have souls. It is all
+they have.’
+
+Then Mary Jane watched the rich whenever she saw them, and vainly
+sought for some one without a soul.
+
+One day at the hour when the machines rested and the human beings
+that tended them rested too, the wind being at that time from the
+direction of the marshlands, the soul of Mary Jane lamented bitterly.
+Then, as she stood outside the factory gates, the soul irresistibly
+compelled her to sing, and a wild song came from her lips, hymning the
+marshlands. And into her song came crying her yearning for home, and
+for the sound of the shout of the North Wind, masterful and proud,
+with his lovely lady the Snow; and she sang of tales that the rushes
+murmured to one another, tales that the teal knew and the watchful
+heron. And over the crowded streets her song went crying away, the song
+of waste places and of wild free lands, full of wonder and magic, for
+she had in her elf-made soul the song of the birds and the roar of the
+organ in the marshes.
+
+At this moment Signor Thompsoni, the well-known English tenor, happened
+to go by with a friend. They stopped and listened; everyone stopped and
+listened.
+
+‘There has been nothing like this in Europe in my time,’ said Signor
+Thompsoni.
+
+So a change came into the life of Mary Jane.
+
+People were written to, and finally it was arranged that she should
+take a leading part in the Covent Garden Opera in a few weeks.
+
+So she went to London to learn.
+
+London and singing lessons were better than the City of the Midlands
+and those terrible machines. Yet still Mary Jane was not free to go
+and live as she liked by the edge of the marshlands, and she was still
+determined to be rid of her soul, but could find no one that had not a
+soul of their own.
+
+One day she was told that the English people would not listen to her as
+Miss Rush, and was asked what more suitable name she would like to be
+called by.
+
+‘I would like to be called Terrible North Wind,’ said Mary Jane, ‘or
+Song of the Rushes.’
+
+When she was told that this was impossible and Signorina Maria Russiano
+was suggested, she acquiesced at once, as she had acquiesced when they
+took her away from her curate; she knew nothing of the ways of humans.
+
+At last the day of the Opera came round, and it was a cold day of the
+winter.
+
+And Signorina Russiano appeared on the stage before a crowded house.
+
+And Signorina Russiano sang.
+
+And into the song went all the longing of her soul, the soul that could
+not go to Paradise, but could only worship God and know the meaning
+of music, and the longing pervaded that Italian song as the infinite
+mystery of the hills is borne along the sound of distant sheep-bells.
+Then in the souls that were in that crowded house arose little memories
+of a great while since that were quite quite dead, and lived awhile
+again during that marvellous song.
+
+And a strange chill went into the blood of all that listened, as though
+they stood on the border of bleak marshes and the North Wind blew.
+
+And some it moved to sorrow and some to regret, and some to an
+unearthly joy,——then suddenly the song went wailing away like the winds
+of the winter from the marshlands when Spring appears from the South.
+
+So it ended. And a great silence fell fog-like over all that house,
+breaking in upon the end of a chatty conversation that Cecilia,
+Countess of Birmingham, was enjoying with a friend.
+
+In the dead hush Signorina Russiano rushed from the stage; she appeared
+again running among the audience, and dashed up to Lady Birmingham.
+
+‘Take my soul,’ she said; ‘it is a beautiful soul. It can worship God,
+and knows the meaning of music and can imagine Paradise. And if you go
+to the marshlands with it you will see beautiful things; there is an
+old town there built of lovely timbers, with ghosts in its streets.’
+
+Lady Birmingham stared. Everyone was standing up. ‘See,’ said Signorina
+Russiano, ‘it is a beautiful soul.’
+
+And she clutched at her left breast a little above the heart, and there
+was the soul shining in her hand, with the green and blue lights going
+round and round and the purple flare in the midst.
+
+‘Take it,’ she said, ‘and you will love all that is beautiful, and
+know the four winds, each one by his name, and the songs of the birds
+at dawn. I do not want it, because I am not free. Put it to your left
+breast a little above the heart.’
+
+Still everybody was standing up, and Lady Birmingham felt uncomfortable.
+
+‘Please offer it to some one else,’ she said.
+
+‘But they all have souls already,’ said Signorina Russiano.
+
+And everybody went on standing up. And Lady Birmingham took the soul in
+her hand.
+
+‘Perhaps it is lucky,’ she said.
+
+She felt that she wanted to pray.
+
+She half-closed her eyes, and said ‘_Unberufen_’. Then she put the soul
+to her left breast a little above the heart, and hoped that the people
+would sit down and the singer go away.
+
+Instantly a heap of clothes collapsed before her. For a moment, in the
+shadow among the seats, those who were born in the dusk hour might have
+seen a little brown thing leaping free from the clothes, then it sprang
+into the bright light of the hall, and became invisible to any human
+eye.
+
+It dashed about for a little, then found the door, and presently was in
+the lamplit streets.
+
+To those that were born in the dusk hour it might have been seen
+leaping rapidly wherever the streets ran northwards and eastwards,
+disappearing from human sight as it passed under the lamps and
+appearing again beyond them with a marsh-light over its head.
+
+Once a dog perceived it and gave chase, and was left far behind.
+
+The cats of London, who are all born in the dusk hour, howled fearfully
+as it went by.
+
+Presently it came to the meaner streets, where the houses are smaller.
+Then it went due north-eastwards, leaping from roof to roof. And so in
+a few minutes it came to more open spaces, and then to the desolate
+lands, where market gardens grow, which are neither town nor country.
+Till at last the good black trees came into view, with their demoniac
+shapes in the night, and the grass was cold and wet, and the night-mist
+floated over it. And a great white owl came by, going up and down
+in the dark. And at all these things the little Wild Thing rejoiced
+elvishly.
+
+And it left London far behind it, reddening the sky, and could
+distinguish no longer its unlovely roar, but heard again the noises of
+the night.
+
+And now it would come through a hamlet glowing and comfortable in the
+night; and now to the dark, wet, open fields again; and many an owl it
+overtook as they drifted through the night, a people friendly to the
+Elf-folk. Sometimes it crossed wide rivers, leaping from star to star;
+and, choosing its way as it went, to avoid the hard rough roads, came
+before midnight to the East Anglian lands.
+
+And it heard there the shout of the North Wind, who was dominant and
+angry, as he drove southwards his adventurous geese; while the rushes
+bent before him chaunting plaintively and low, like enslaved rowers of
+some fabulous trireme, bending and swinging under blows of the lash,
+and singing all the while a doleful song.
+
+And it felt the good dank air that clothes by night the broad East
+Anglian lands, and came again to some old perilous pool where the
+soft green mosses grew, and there plunged downward and downward into
+the dear dark water till it felt the homely ooze once more coming up
+between its toes. Thence, out of the lovely chill that is in the heart
+of the ooze, it arose renewed and rejoicing to dance upon the image of
+the stars.
+
+I chanced to stand that night by the marsh’s edge, forgetting in my
+mind the affairs of men; and I saw the marsh-fires come leaping up from
+all the perilous places. And they came up by flocks the whole night
+long to the number of a great multitude, and danced away together over
+the marshes.
+
+And I believe that there was a great rejoicing all that night among the
+kith of the Elf-folk.
+
+
+
+
+The Highwaymen
+
+
+Tom o’ the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the
+night. From where he was, a man might see the white recumbent sheep and
+the black outline of the lonely downs, and the grey line of the farther
+and lonelier downs beyond them; or in hollows far below him, out of
+the pitiless wind, he might see the grey smoke of hamlets arising from
+black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of Tom, and all the
+sounds were silence in his ears; only his soul struggled to slip from
+the iron chains and to pass southwards into Paradise. And the wind blew
+and blew.
+
+For Tom tonight had nought but the wind to ride; they had taken his
+true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields
+and the sky, men’s voices and the laughter of women, and had left him
+alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind for ever. And the
+wind blew and blew.
+
+But the soul of Tom o’ the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and
+whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the
+iron collar by the wind that blows from Paradise from the south. And
+swinging there by the neck, there fell away old sneers from off his
+lips, and scoffs that he had long since scoffed at God fell from his
+tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out of his heart, and from his
+fingers the stains of deeds that were evil; and they all fell to the
+ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And when these ill
+things had all fallen away, Tom’s soul was clean again, as his early
+love had found it, a long while since in spring; and it swung up there
+in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with his old torn coat and rusty
+chains.
+
+And the wind blew and blew.
+
+And ever and anon the souls of the sepultured, coming from consecrated
+acres, would go by beating up wind to Paradise past the Gallows Tree
+and past the soul of Tom, that might not go free.
+
+Night after night Tom watched the sheep upon the downs with empty
+hollow sockets, till his dead hair grew and covered his poor dead face,
+and hid the shame of it from the sheep. And the wind blew and blew.
+
+Sometimes on gusts of the wind came someone’s tears, and beat and beat
+against the iron chains, but could not rust them through. And the wind
+blew and blew.
+
+And every evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came
+flocking in from doing their work in the world, the work that may not
+cease, and sat along the gallows branches and chirrupped to the soul
+of Tom, the soul that might not go free. All the thoughts that he had
+ever uttered! And the evil thoughts rebuked the soul that bore them
+because they might not die. And all those that he had uttered the most
+furtively, chirrupped the loudest and the shrillest in the branches all
+the night.
+
+And all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about himself now
+pointed at the wet bones and mocked at the old torn coat. But the
+thoughts that he had had of others were the only companions that his
+soul had to soothe it in the night as it swung to and fro. And they
+twittered to the soul and cheered the poor dumb thing that could have
+dreams no more, till there came a murderous thought and drove them all
+away.
+
+And the wind blew and blew.
+
+Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence, lay in his white sepulchre
+of marble, facing full to the southwards towards Paradise. And over
+his tomb was sculptured the Cross of Christ, that his soul might
+have repose. No wind howled here as it howled in lonely tree-tops up
+upon the downs, but came with gentle breezes, orchard scented, over
+the low lands from Paradise from the southwards, and played about
+forget-me-nots and grasses in the consecrated land where lay the
+Reposeful round the sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence.
+Easy it was for a man’s soul to pass from such a sepulchre, and,
+flitting low over remembered fields, to come upon the garden lands of
+Paradise and find eternal ease.
+
+And the wind blew and blew.
+
+In a tavern of foul repute three men were lapping gin. Their names were
+Joe and Will and the gypsy Puglioni; none other names had they, for of
+whom their fathers were they had no knowledge, but only dark suspicions.
+
+Sin had caressed and stroked their faces often with its paws, but the
+face of Puglioni Sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin. Their food
+was robbery and their pastime murder. All of them had incurred the
+sorrow of God and the enmity of man. They sat at a table with a pack
+of cards before them, all greasy with the marks of cheating thumbs.
+And they whispered to one another over their gin, but so low that the
+landlord of the tavern at the other end of the room could hear only
+muffled oaths, and knew not by Whom they swore or what they said.
+
+These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had given unto a
+man. And he to whom their friendship had been given had nothing else
+besides, saving some bones that swung in the wind and rain, and an old
+torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might not go free.
+
+But as the night wore on the three friends left their gin and stole
+away, and crept down to that graveyard where rested in his sepulchre
+Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence. At the edge of the graveyard,
+but outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty grave, two digging
+while one watched in the wind and rain. And the worms that crept in the
+unhallowed ground wondered and waited.
+
+And the terrible hour of midnight came upon them with its fears, and
+found them still beside the place of tombs. And the three friends
+trembled at the horror of such an hour in such a place, and shivered in
+the wind and drenching rain, but still worked on. And the wind blew and
+blew.
+
+Soon they had finished. And at once they left the hungry grave with all
+its worms unfed, and went away over the wet fields stealthily but in
+haste, leaving the place of tombs behind them in the midnight. And as
+they went they shivered, and each man as he shivered cursed the rain
+aloud. And so they came to the spot where they had hidden a ladder and
+a lantern. There they held long debate whether they should light the
+lantern, or whether they should go without it for fear of the King’s
+men. But in the end it seemed to them better that they should have
+the light of their lantern, and risk being taken by the King’s men
+and hanged, than that they should come suddenly face to face in the
+darkness with whatever one might come face to face with a little after
+midnight about the Gallows Tree.
+
+On three roads in England whereon it was not the wont of folk to go
+their ways in safety, travellers tonight went unmolested. But the three
+friends, walking several paces wide of the King’s highway, approached
+the Gallows Tree, and Will carried the lantern and Joe the ladder, but
+Puglioni carried a great sword wherewith to do the work which must be
+done. When they came close, they saw how bad was the case with Tom,
+for little remained of that fine figure of a man and nothing at all of
+his great resolute spirit, only as they came they thought they heard a
+whimpering cry like the sound of a thing that was caged and unfree.
+
+To and fro, to and fro in the winds swung the bones and the soul of
+Tom, for the sins that he had sinned on the King’s highway against the
+laws of the King; and with shadows and a lantern through the darkness,
+at the peril of their lives, came the three friends that his soul had
+won before it swung in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom’s own soul that he
+had sown all his life had grown into a Gallows Tree that bore in season
+iron chains in clusters; while the careless seeds that he had strewn
+here and there, a kindly jest and a few merry words, had grown into the
+triple friendship that would not desert his bones.
+
+Then the three set the ladder against the tree, and Puglioni went up
+with his sword in his right hand, and at the top of it he reached up
+and began to hack at the neck below the iron collar. Presently, the
+bones and the old coat and the soul of Tom fell down with a rattle, and
+a moment afterwards his head that had watched so long alone swung clear
+from the swinging chain. These things Will and Joe gathered up, and
+Puglioni came running down his ladder, and they heaped upon its rungs
+the terrible remains of their friend, and hastened away wet through
+with the rain, with the fear of phantoms in their hearts and horror
+lying before them on the ladder. By two o’clock they were down again in
+the valley out of the bitter wind, but they went on past the open grave
+into the graveyard all among the tombs, with their lantern and their
+ladder and the terrible thing upon it, which kept their friendship
+still. Then these three, that had robbed the Law of its due and proper
+victim, still sinned on for what was still their friend, and levered
+out the marble slabs from the sacred sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop
+of Alois and Vayence. And from it they took the very bones of the
+Archbishop himself, and carried them away to the eager grave that they
+had left, and put them in and shovelled back the earth. But all that
+lay on the ladder they placed, with a few tears, within the great white
+sepulchre under the Cross of Christ, and put back the marble slabs.
+
+Thence the soul of Tom, arising hallowed out of sacred ground, went
+at dawn down the valley, and, lingering a little about his mother’s
+cottage and old haunts of childhood, passed on and came to the wide
+lands beyond the clustered homesteads. There, there met with it all the
+kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had, and they flew and
+sang beside it all the way southwards, until at last, with singing all
+about it, it came to Paradise.
+
+But Will and Joe and the gypsy Puglioni went back to their gin, and
+robbed and cheated again in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not
+that in their sinful lives they had sinned one sin at which the Angels
+smiled.
+
+
+
+
+In The Twilight
+
+
+The lock was quite crowded with boats when we capsized. I went down
+backwards for some few feet before I started to swim, then I came
+spluttering upwards towards the light; but, instead of reaching the
+surface, I hit my head against the keel of a boat and went down again.
+I struck out almost at once and came up, but before I reached the
+surface my head crashed against a boat for the second time, and I
+went right to the bottom. I was confused and thoroughly frightened.
+I was desperately in need of air, and knew that if I hit a boat for
+the third time I should never see the surface again. Drowning is a
+horrible death, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary.
+My past life never occurred to my mind, but I thought of many trivial
+things that I might not do or see again if I were drowned. I swam up
+in a slanting direction, hoping to avoid the boat that I had struck.
+Suddenly I saw all the boats in the lock quite clearly just above me,
+and every one of their curved varnished planks and the scratches and
+chips upon their keels. I saw several gaps among the boats where I
+might have swam up to the surface, but it did not seem worthwhile to
+try and get there, and I had forgotten why I wanted to. Then all the
+people leaned over the sides of their boats: I saw the light flannel
+suits of the men and the coloured flowers in the women’s hats, and
+I noticed details of their dresses quite distinctly. Everybody in
+the boats was looking down at me; then they all said to one another,
+‘We must leave him now,’ and they and the boats went away; and there
+was nothing above me but the river and the sky, and on either side
+of me were the green weeds that grew in the mud, for I had somehow
+sunk back to the bottom again. The river as it flowed by murmured not
+unpleasantly in my ears, and the rushes seemed to be whispering quite
+softly among themselves. Presently the murmuring of the river took the
+form of words, and I heard it say, ‘We must go on to the sea; we must
+leave him now.’
+
+Then the river went away, and both its banks; and the rushes whispered,
+‘Yes, we must leave him now.’ And they too departed, and I was left
+in a great emptiness staring up at the blue sky. Then the great sky
+bent over me, and spoke quite softly like a kindly nurse soothing some
+little foolish child, and the sky said, ‘Goodbye. All will be well.
+Goodbye.’ And I was sorry to lose the blue sky, but the sky went away.
+Then I was alone, with nothing round about me; I could see no light,
+but it was not dark—there was just absolutely nothing, above me and
+below me and on every side. I thought that perhaps I was dead, and
+that this might be eternity; when suddenly some great southern hills
+rose up all round about me, and I was lying on the warm, grassy slope
+of a valley in England. It was a valley that I had known well when I
+was young, but I had not seen it now for many years. Beside me stood
+the tall flower of the mint; I saw the sweet-smelling thyme flower and
+one or two wild strawberries. There came up to me from fields below
+me the beautiful smell of hay, and there was a break in the voice
+of the cuckoo. There was a feeling of summer and of evening and of
+lateness and of Sabbath in the air; the sky was calm and full of a
+strange colour, and the sun was low; the bells in the church in the
+village were all a-ring, and the chimes went wandering with echoes up
+the valley towards the sun, and whenever the echoes died a new chime
+was born. And all the people of the village walked up a stone-paved
+path under a black oak porch and went into the church, and the chimes
+stopped and the people of the village began to sing, and the level
+sunlight shone on the white tombstones that stood all round the church.
+Then there was a stillness in the village, and shouts and laughter came
+up from the valley no more, only the occasional sound of the organ and
+of song. And the blue butterflies, those that love the chalk, came and
+perched themselves on the tall grasses, five or six sometimes on a
+single piece of grass, and they closed their wings and slept, and the
+grass bent a little beneath them. And from the woods along the tops
+of the hills the rabbits came hopping out and nibbled the grass, and
+hopped a little further and nibbled again, and the large daisies closed
+their petals up and the birds began to sing.
+
+Then the hills spoke, all the great chalk hills that I loved, and with
+a deep and solemn voice they said, ‘We have come to you to say Goodbye.’
+
+Then they all went away, and there was nothing again all round about
+me upon every side. I looked everywhere for something on which to rest
+the eye. Nothing. Suddenly a low grey sky swept over me and a moist air
+met my face; a great plain rushed up to me from the edge of the clouds;
+on two sides it touched the sky, and on two sides between it and the
+clouds a line of low hills lay. One line of hills brooded grey in the
+distance, the other stood a patchwork of little square green fields,
+with a few white cottages about it. The plain was an archipelago of
+a million islands each about a yard square or less, and everyone of
+them was red with heather. I was back on the Bog of Allen again after
+many years, and it was just the same as ever, though I had heard that
+they were draining it. I was with an old friend whom I was glad to see
+again, for they had told me that he died some years ago. He seemed
+strangely young, but what surprised me most was that he stood upon a
+piece of bright green moss which I had always learned to think would
+never bear. I was glad, too, to see the old bog again, and all the
+lovely things that grew there—the scarlet mosses and the green mosses
+and the firm and friendly heather, and the deep silent water. I saw a
+little stream that wandered vaguely through the bog, and little white
+shells down in the clear depths of it; I saw, a little way off, one of
+the great pools where no islands are, with rushes round its borders,
+where the duck love to come. I looked long at that untroubled world
+of heather, and then I looked at the white cottages on the hill, and
+saw the grey smoke curling from their chimneys and knew that they
+burned turf there, and longed for the smell of burning turf again.
+And far away there arose and came nearer the weird cry of wild and
+happy voices, and a flock of geese appeared that was coming from the
+northward. Then their cries blended into one great voice of exultation,
+the voice of freedom, the voice of Ireland, the voice of the Waste;
+and the voice said ‘Goodbye to you. Goodbye!’ and passed away into the
+distance; and as it passed, the tame geese on the farms cried out to
+their brothers up above them that they were free. Then the hills went
+away, and the bog and the sky went with them, and I was alone again, as
+lost souls are alone.
+
+Then there grew up beside me the red brick buildings of my first school
+and the chapel that adjoined it. The fields a little way off were full
+of boys in white flannels playing cricket. On the asphalt playing
+ground, just by the schoolroom windows, stood Agamemnon, Achilles, and
+Odysseus, with their Argives armed behind them; but Hector stepped down
+out of a ground-floor window, and in the schoolroom were all Priam’s
+sons and the Achæans and fair Helen; and a little farther away the
+Ten Thousand drifted across the playground, going up into the heart
+of Persia to place Cyrus on his brother’s throne. And the boys that I
+knew called to me from the fields, and said ‘Goodbye,’ and they and the
+fields went away; and the Ten Thousand said ‘Goodbye,’ each file as
+they passed me marching swiftly, and they too disappeared. And Hector
+and Agamemnon said ‘Goodbye,’ and the host of the Argives and of the
+Achæans; and they all went away and the old school with them, and I was
+alone again.
+
+The next scene that filled the emptiness was rather dim: I was being
+led by my nurse along a little footpath over a common in Surrey. She
+was quite young. Close by a band of gypsies had lit their fire, near
+them their romantic caravan stood unhorsed, and the horse cropped
+grass beside it. It was evening, and the gypsies muttered round their
+fire in a tongue unknown and strange. Then they all said in English,
+‘Goodbye’. And the evening and the common and the campfire went away.
+And instead of this a white highway with darkness and stars below it
+that led into darkness and stars, but at the near end of the road were
+common fields and gardens, and there I stood close to a large number of
+people, men and women. And I saw a man walking alone down the road away
+from me towards the darkness and the stars, and all the people called
+him by his name, and the man would not hear them, but walked on down
+the road, and the people went on calling him by his name. But I became
+irritated with the man because he would not stop or turn round when so
+many people called him by his name, and it was a very strange name. And
+I became weary of hearing the strange name so very often repeated, so
+that I made a great effort to call him, that he might listen and that
+the people might stop repeating this strange name. And with the effort
+I opened my eyes wide, and the name that the people called was my own
+name, and I lay on the river’s bank with men and women bending over me,
+and my hair was wet.
+
+
+
+
+The Ghosts
+
+
+The argument that I had with my brother in his great lonely house will
+scarcely interest my readers. Not those, at least, whom I hope may be
+attracted by the experiment that I undertook, and by the strange things
+that befell me in that hazardous region into which so lightly and so
+ignorantly I allowed my fancy to enter. It was at Oneleigh that I had
+visited him.
+
+Now Oneleigh stands in a wide isolation, in the midst of a dark
+gathering of old whispering cedars. They nod their heads together when
+the North Wind comes, and nod again and agree, and furtively grow
+still again, and say no more awhile. The North Wind is to them like
+a nice problem among wise old men; they nod their heads over it, and
+mutter about it all together. They know much, those cedars, they have
+been there so long. Their grandsires knew Lebanon, and the grandsires
+of these were the servants of the King of Tyre and came to Solomon’s
+court. And amidst these black-haired children of grey-headed Time
+stood the old house of Oneleigh. I know not how many centuries had
+lashed against it their evanescent foam of years; but it was still
+unshattered, and all about it were the things of long ago, as cling
+strange growths to some sea-defying rock. Here, like the shells of
+long-dead limpets, was armour that men encased themselves in long ago;
+here, too, were tapestries of many colours, beautiful as seaweed; no
+modern flotsam ever drifted hither, no early Victorian furniture, no
+electric light. The great trade routes that littered the years with
+empty meat tins and cheap novels were far from here. Well, well, the
+centuries will shatter it and drive its fragments on to distant shores.
+Meanwhile, while it yet stood, I went on a visit there to my brother,
+and we argued about ghosts. My brother’s intelligence on this subject
+seemed to me to be in need of correction. He mistook things imagined
+for things having an actual existence; he argued that second-hand
+evidence of persons having seen ghosts proved ghosts to exist. I said
+that even if they had seen ghosts, this was no proof at all; nobody
+believes that there are red rats, though there is plenty of first-hand
+evidence of men having seen them in delirium. Finally, I said I
+would see ghosts myself, and continue to argue against their actual
+existence. So I collected a handful of cigars and drank several cups of
+very strong tea, and went without my dinner, and retired into a room
+where there was dark oak and all the chairs were covered with tapestry;
+and my brother went to bed bored with our argument, and trying hard to
+dissuade me from making myself uncomfortable. All the way up the old
+stairs as I stood at the bottom of them, and as his candle went winding
+up and up, I heard him still trying to persuade me to have supper and
+go to bed.
+
+It was a windy winter, and outside the cedars were muttering I know not
+what about; but I think that they were Tories of a school long dead,
+and were troubled about something new. Within, a great damp log upon
+the fireplace began to squeak and sing, and struck up a whining tune,
+and a tall flame stood up over it and beat time, and all the shadows
+crowded round and began to dance. In distant corners old masses of
+darkness sat still like chaperones and never moved. Over there, in the
+darkest part of the room, stood a door that was always locked. It led
+into the hall, but no one ever used it; near that door something had
+happened once of which the family are not proud. We do not speak of it.
+There in the firelight stood the venerable forms of the old chairs;
+the hands that had made their tapestries lay far beneath the soil, the
+needles with which they wrought were many separate flakes of rust. No
+one wove now in that old room—no one but the assiduous ancient spiders
+who, watching by the deathbed of the things of yore, worked shrouds to
+hold their dust. In shrouds about the cornices already lay the heart of
+the oak wainscot that the worm had eaten out.
+
+Surely at such an hour, in such a room, a fancy already excited by
+hunger and strong tea might see the ghosts of former occupants. I
+expected nothing less. The fire flickered and the shadows danced,
+memories of strange historic things rose vividly in my mind; but
+midnight chimed solemnly from a seven-foot clock, and nothing happened.
+My imagination would not be hurried, and the chill that is with the
+small hours had come upon me, and I had nearly abandoned myself to
+sleep, when in the hall adjoining there arose the rustling of silk
+dresses that I had waited for and expected. Then there entered two
+by two the high-born ladies and their gallants of Jacobean times.
+They were little more than shadows—very dignified shadows, and almost
+indistinct; but you have all read ghost stories before, you have all
+seen in museums the dresses of those times—there is little need to
+describe them; they entered, several of them, and sat down on the
+old chairs, perhaps a little carelessly considering the value of the
+tapestries. Then the rustling of their dresses ceased.
+
+Well—I had seen ghosts, and was neither frightened nor convinced that
+ghosts existed. I was about to get up out of my chair and go to bed,
+when there came a sound of pattering in the hall, a sound of bare feet
+coming over the polished floor, and every now and then a foot would
+slip and I heard claws scratching along the wood as some four-footed
+thing lost and regained its balance. I was not frightened, but uneasy.
+The pattering came straight towards the room that I was in, then I
+heard the sniffing of expectant nostrils; perhaps ‘uneasy’ was not the
+most suitable word to describe my feelings then. Suddenly a herd of
+black creatures larger than bloodhounds came galloping in; they had
+large pendulous ears, their noses were to the ground sniffing, they
+went up to the lords and ladies of long ago and fawned about them
+disgustingly. Their eyes were horribly bright, and ran down to great
+depths. When I looked into them I knew suddenly what these creatures
+were, and I was afraid. They were the sins, the filthy, immortal sins
+of those courtly men and women.
+
+How demure she was, the lady that sat near me on an old-world chair—how
+demure she was, and how fair, to have beside her with its jowl upon
+her lap a sin with such cavernous red eyes, a clear case of murder.
+And you, yonder lady with the golden hair, surely not you—and yet that
+fearful beast with the yellow eyes slinks from you to yonder courtier
+there, and whenever one drives it away it slinks back to the other.
+Over there a lady tries to smile as she strokes the loathsome furry
+head of another’s sin, but one of her own is jealous and intrudes
+itself under her hand. Here sits an old nobleman with his grandson on
+his knee, and one of the great black sins of the grandfather is licking
+the child’s face and has made the child its own. Sometimes a ghost
+would move and seek another chair, but always his pack of sins would
+move behind him. Poor ghosts, poor ghosts! how many flights they must
+have attempted for two hundred years from their hated sins, how many
+excuses they must have given for their presence, and the sins were with
+them still—and still unexplained. Suddenly one of them seemed to scent
+my living blood, and bayed horribly, and all the others left their
+ghosts at once and dashed up to the sin that had given tongue. The
+brute had picked up my scent near the door by which I had entered, and
+they moved slowly nearer to me sniffing along the floor, and uttering
+every now and then their fearful cry. I saw that the whole thing had
+gone too far. But now they had seen me, now they were all about me,
+they sprang up trying to reach my throat; and whenever their claws
+touched me, horrible thoughts came into my mind and unutterable desires
+dominated my heart. I planned bestial things as these creatures leaped
+around me, and planned them with a masterly cunning. A great red-eyed
+murder was among the foremost of those furry things from whom I feebly
+strove to defend my throat. Suddenly it seemed to me good that I should
+kill my brother. It seemed important to me that I should not risk being
+punished. I knew where a revolver was kept; after I had shot him, I
+would dress the body up and put flour on the face like a man that had
+been acting as a ghost. It would be very simple. I would say that he
+had frightened me—and the servants had heard us talking about ghosts.
+There were one or two trivialities that would have to be arranged, but
+nothing escaped my mind. Yes, it seemed to me very good that I should
+kill my brother as I looked into the red depths of this creature’s
+eyes. But one last effort as they dragged me down—‘If two straight
+lines cut one another,’ I said, ‘the opposite angles are equal. Let
+AB, CD, cut one another at E, then the angles CEA, CEB equal two right
+angles (prop. xiii.). Also CEA, AED equal two right angles.’
+
+I moved towards the door to get the revolver; a hideous exultation
+arose among the beasts. ‘But the angle CEA is common, therefore AED
+equals CEB. In the same way CEA equals DEB. _QED_.’ It was proved.
+Logic and reason re-established themselves in my mind, there were no
+dark hounds of sin, the tapestried chairs were empty. It seemed to me
+an inconceivable thought that a man should murder his brother.
+
+
+
+
+The Whirlpool
+
+
+Once going down to the shore of the great sea I came upon the Whirlpool
+lying prone upon the sand and stretching his huge limbs in the sun.
+
+I said to him: ‘Who art thou?’
+
+And he said:
+
+‘I am named Nooz Wana, the Whelmer of Ships, and from the Straits of
+Pondar Obed I am come, wherein it is my wont to vex the seas. There I
+chased Leviathan with my hands when he was young and strong; often he
+slipped through my fingers, and away into the weed forests that grow
+below the storms in the dusk on the floor of the sea; but at last I
+caught and tamed him. For there I lurk upon the ocean’s floor, midway
+between the knees of either cliff, to guard the passage of the Straits
+from all the ships that seek the Further Seas; and whenever the white
+sails of the tall ships come swelling round the corner of the crag out
+of the sunlit spaces of the Known Sea and into the dark of the Straits,
+then standing firm upon the ocean’s floor, with my knees a little bent,
+I take the waters of the Straits in both my hands and whirl them round
+my head. But the ship comes gliding on with the sound of the sailors
+singing on her decks, all singing songs of the islands and carrying the
+rumour of their cities to the lonely seas, till they see me suddenly
+astride athwart their course, and are caught in the waters as I whirl
+them round my head. Then I draw in the waters of the Straits towards
+me and downwards, nearer and nearer to my terrible feet, and hear in
+my ears above the roar of my waters the ultimate cry of the ship; for
+just before I drag them to the floor of ocean and stamp them asunder
+with my wrecking feet, ships utter their ultimate cry, and with it go
+the lives of all the sailors and passes the soul of the ship. And in
+the ultimate cry of ships are the songs the sailors sing, and their
+hopes and all their loves, and the song of the wind among the masts and
+timbers when they stood in the forest long ago, and the whisper of the
+rain that made them grow, and the soul of the tall pine-tree or the
+oak. All this a ship gives up in one cry which she makes at the last.
+And at that moment I would pity the tall ship if I might; but a man
+may feel pity who sits in comfort by his fireside telling tales in the
+winter—no pity are they permitted ever to feel who do the work of the
+gods; and so when I have brought her circling from round my shoulders
+to my waist and thence, with her masts all sloping inwards, to my
+knees, and lower still and downwards till her topmast pennants flutter
+against my ankles, then I, Nooz Wana, Whelmer of Ships, lift up my feet
+and trample her beams asunder, and there go up again to the surface of
+the Straits only a few broken timbers and the memories of the sailors
+and of their early loves to drift for ever down the empty seas.
+
+‘Once in every hundred years, for one day only, I go to rest myself
+along the shore and to sun my limbs on the sand, that the tall ships
+may go through the unguarded Straits and find the Happy Isles. And the
+Happy Isles stand midmost among the smiles of the sunny Further Seas,
+and there the sailors may come upon content and long for nothing; or if
+they long for aught, they shall possess it.
+
+‘There comes not Time with his devouring hours; nor any of the evils of
+the gods or men. These are the islands whereto the souls of the sailors
+every night put in from all the world to rest from going up and down
+the seas, to behold again the vision of far-off intimate hills that
+lift their orchards high above the fields facing the sunlight, and for
+a while again to speak with the souls of old. But about the dawn dreams
+twitter and arise, and circling thrice around the Happy Isles set out
+again to find the world of men, then follow the souls of the sailors,
+as, at evening, with slow stroke of stately wings the heron follows
+behind the flight of multitudinous rooks; but the souls returning find
+awakening bodies and endure the toil of the day. Such are the Happy
+Isles, whereunto few have come, save but as roaming shadows in the
+night, and for only a little while.
+
+‘But longer than is needed to make me strong and fierce again I may not
+stay, and at set of sun, when my arms are strong again, and when I feel
+in my legs that I can plant them fair and bent upon the floor of ocean,
+then I go back to take a new grip upon the waters of the Straits, and
+to guard the Further Seas again for a hundred years. Because the gods
+are jealous, lest too many men shall pass to the Happy Isles and find
+content. _For the gods have not content_.’
+
+
+
+
+The Hurricane
+
+
+One night I sat alone on the great down, looking over the edge of it
+at a murky, sullen city. All day long with its smoke it had troubled
+the holy sky, and now it sat there roaring in the distance and glared
+at me with its furnaces and lighted factory windows. Suddenly I became
+aware that I was not the only enemy of that city, for I perceived
+the colossal form of the Hurricane walking over the down towards me,
+playing idly with the flowers as he passed, and near me he stopped and
+spake to the Earthquake, who had come up mole-like but vast out of a
+cleft in the earth.
+
+‘Old friend,’ said the Hurricane, ‘rememberest when we wrecked the
+nations and drave the herds of the sea into new pasturage?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said the Earthquake, drowsily; ‘Yes, yes.’
+
+‘Old friend,’ said the Hurricane, ‘there are cities everywhere. Over
+thy head while thou didst sleep they have built them constantly. My
+four children the Winds suffocate with the fumes of them, the valleys
+are desolate of flowers, and the lovely forests are cut down since last
+we went abroad together.’
+
+The Earthquake lay there, with his snout towards the city, blinking at
+the lights, while the tall Hurricane stood beside him pointing fiercely
+at it.
+
+‘Come,’ said the Hurricane, ‘let us fare forth again and destroy them,
+that all the lovely forests may come back and the furry creeping
+things. Thou shalt whelm these cities utterly and drive the people
+forth, and I will smite them in the shelterless places and sweep their
+desecrations from the sea. Wilt thou come forth with me and do this
+thing for the glory of it? Wilt thou wreck the world again as we did,
+thou and I, or ever Man had come? Wilt thou come forth to this place at
+this hour tomorrow night?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said the Earthquake, ‘Yes,’ and he crept to his cleft again, and
+head foremost waddled down into the abysses.
+
+When the Hurricane strode away, I got up quietly and departed, but at
+that hour of the next night I came up cautiously to the same spot.
+There I found the huge grey form of the Hurricane alone, with his head
+bowed in his hands, weeping; for the Earthquake sleeps long and heavily
+in the abysses, and he would not wake.
+
+
+
+
+The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth
+
+
+In a wood older than record, a foster brother of the hills, stood the
+village of Allathurion; and there was peace between the people of that
+village and all the folk who walked in the dark ways of the wood,
+whether they were human or of the tribes of the beasts or of the race
+of the fairies and the elves and the little sacred spirits of trees and
+streams. Moreover, the village people had peace among themselves and
+between them and their lord, Lorendiac. In front of the village was a
+wide and grassy space, and beyond this the great wood again, but at the
+back the trees came right up to the houses, which, with their great
+beams and wooden framework and thatched roofs, green with moss, seemed
+almost to be a part of the forest.
+
+Now in the time I tell of, there was trouble in Allathurion, for of an
+evening fell dreams were wont to come slipping through the tree trunks
+and into the peaceful village; and they assumed dominion of men’s minds
+and led them in watches of the night through the cindery plains of
+Hell. Then the magician of that village made spells against those fell
+dreams; yet still the dreams came flitting through the trees as soon as
+the dark had fallen, and led men’s minds by night into terrible places
+and caused them to praise Satan openly with their lips.
+
+And men grew afraid of sleep in Allathurion. And they grew worn and
+pale, some through the want of rest, and others from fear of the things
+they saw on the cindery plains of Hell.
+
+Then the magician of the village went up into the tower of his house,
+and all night long those whom fear kept awake could see his window high
+up in the night glowing softly alone. The next day, when the twilight
+was far gone and night was gathering fast, the magician went away to
+the forest’s edge, and uttered there the spell that he had made. And
+the spell was a compulsive, terrible thing, having a power over evil
+dreams and over spirits of ill; for it was a verse of forty lines in
+many languages, both living and dead, and had in it the word wherewith
+the people of the plains are wont to curse their camels, and the shout
+wherewith the whalers of the north lure the whales shoreward to be
+killed, and a word that causes elephants to trumpet; and every one of
+the forty lines closed with a rhyme for ‘wasp’.
+
+And still the dreams came flitting through the forest, and led men’s
+souls into the plains of Hell. Then the magician knew that the dreams
+were from Gaznak. Therefore he gathered the people of the village,
+and told them that he had uttered his mightiest spell—a spell having
+power over all that were human or of the tribes of the beasts; and that
+since it had not availed the dreams must come from Gaznak, the greatest
+magician among the spaces of the stars. And he read to the people out
+of the Book of Magicians, which tells the comings of the comet and
+foretells his coming again. And he told them how Gaznak rides upon the
+comet, and how he visits Earth once in every two hundred and thirty
+years, and makes for himself a vast, invincible fortress and sends out
+dreams to feed on the minds of men, and may never be vanquished but by
+the sword Sacnoth.
+
+And a cold fear fell on the hearts of the villagers when they found
+that their magician had failed them.
+
+Then spake Leothric, son of the Lord Lorendiac, and twenty years old
+was he: ‘Good Master, what of the sword Sacnoth?’
+
+And the village magician answered: ‘Fair Lord, no such sword as yet is
+wrought, for it lies as yet in the hide of Tharagavverug, protecting
+his spine.’
+
+Then said Leothric: ‘Who is Tharagavverug, and where may he be
+encountered?’
+
+And the magician of Allathurion answered: ‘He is the dragon-crocodile
+who haunts the Northern marshes and ravages the homesteads by their
+marge. And the hide of his back is of steel, and his under parts are
+of iron; but along the midst of his back, over his spine, there lies a
+narrow strip of unearthly steel. This strip of steel is Sacnoth, and it
+may be neither cleft nor molten, and there is nothing in the world that
+may avail to break it, nor even leave a scratch upon its surface. It
+is of the length of a good sword, and of the breadth thereof. Shouldst
+thou prevail against Tharagavverug, his hide may be melted away from
+Sacnoth in a furnace; but there is only one thing that may sharpen
+Sacnoth’s edge, and this is one of Tharagavverug’s own steel eyes; and
+the other eye thou must fasten to Sacnoth’s hilt, and it will watch for
+thee. But it is a hard task to vanquish Tharagavverug, for no sword can
+pierce his hide; his back cannot be broken, and he can neither burn nor
+drown. In one way only can Tharagavverug die, and that is by starving.’
+
+Then sorrow fell upon Leothric, but the magician spoke on:
+
+‘If a man drive Tharagavverug away from his food with a stick for three
+days, he will starve on the third day at sunset. And though he is not
+vulnerable, yet in one spot he may take hurt, for his nose is only of
+lead. A sword would merely lay bare the uncleavable bronze beneath, but
+if his nose be smitten constantly with a stick he will always recoil
+from the pain, and thus may Tharagavverug, to left and right, be driven
+away from his food.’
+
+Then Leothric said: ‘What is Tharagavverug’s food?’
+
+And the magician of Allathurion said: ‘His food is men.’
+
+But Leothric went straightway thence, and cut a great staff from a
+hazel tree, and slept early that evening. But the next morning, awaking
+from troubled dreams, he arose before the dawn, and, taking with him
+provisions for five days, set out through the forest northwards towards
+the marshes. For some hours he moved through the gloom of the forest,
+and when he emerged from it the sun was above the horizon shining on
+pools of water in the waste land. Presently he saw the claw-marks of
+Tharagavverug deep in the soil, and the track of his tail between them
+like a furrow in a field. Then Leothric followed the tracks till he
+heard the bronze heart of Tharagavverug before him, booming like a bell.
+
+And Tharagavverug, it being the hour when he took the first meal of the
+day, was moving towards a village with his heart tolling. And all the
+people of the village were come out to meet him, as it was their wont
+to do; for they abode not the suspense of awaiting Tharagavverug and of
+hearing him sniffing brazenly as he went from door to door, pondering
+slowly in his metal mind what habitant he should choose. And none dared
+to flee, for in the days when the villagers fled from Tharagavverug,
+he, having chosen his victim, would track him tirelessly, like a doom.
+Nothing availed them against Tharagavverug. Once they climbed the trees
+when he came, but Tharagavverug went up to one, arching his back and
+leaning over slightly, and rasped against the trunk until it fell.
+And when Leothric came near, Tharagavverug saw him out of one of his
+small steel eyes and came towards him leisurely, and the echoes of his
+heart swirled up through his open mouth. And Leothric stepped sideways
+from his onset, and came between him and the village and smote him on
+the nose, and the blow of the stick made a dint in the soft lead. And
+Tharagavverug swung clumsily away, uttering one fearful cry like the
+sound of a great church bell that had become possessed of a soul that
+fluttered upward from the tombs at night—an evil soul, giving the bell
+a voice. Then he attacked Leothric, snarling, and again Leothric leapt
+aside, and smote him on the nose with his stick. Tharagavverug uttered
+like a bell howling. And whenever the dragon-crocodile attacked him, or
+turned towards the village, Leothric smote him again.
+
+So all day long Leothric drove the monster with a stick, and he drove
+him farther and farther from his prey, with his heart tolling angrily
+and his voice crying out for pain.
+
+Towards evening Tharagavverug ceased to snap at Leothric, but ran
+before him to avoid the stick, for his nose was sore and shining;
+and in the gloaming the villagers came out and danced to cymbal and
+psaltery. When Tharagavverug heard the cymbal and psaltery, hunger and
+anger came upon him, and he felt as some lord might feel who was held
+by force from the banquet in his own castle and heard the creaking spit
+go round and round and the good meat crackling on it. And all that
+night he attacked Leothric fiercely, and oft-times nearly caught him in
+the darkness; for his gleaming eyes of steel could see as well by night
+as by day. And Leothric gave ground slowly till the dawn, and when the
+light came they were near the village again; yet not so near to it as
+they had been when they encountered, for Leothric drove Tharagavverug
+farther in the day than Tharagavverug had forced him back in the night.
+Then Leothric drove him again with his stick till the hour came when it
+was the custom of the dragon-crocodile to find his man. One third of
+his man he would eat at the time he found him, and the rest at noon and
+evening. But when the hour came for finding his man a great fierceness
+came on Tharagavverug, and he grabbed rapidly at Leothric, but could
+not seize him, and for a long while neither of them would retire. But
+at last the pain of the stick on his leaden nose overcame the hunger of
+the dragon-crocodile, and he turned from it howling. From that moment
+Tharagavverug weakened. All that day Leothric drove him with his stick,
+and at night both held their ground; and when the dawn of the third day
+was come the heart of Tharagavverug beat slower and fainter. It was
+as though a tired man was ringing a bell. Once Tharagavverug nearly
+seized a frog, but Leothric snatched it away just in time. Towards
+noon the dragon-crocodile lay still for a long while, and Leothric
+stood near him and leaned on his trusty stick. He was very tired
+and sleepless, but had more leisure now for eating his provisions.
+With Tharagavverug the end was coming fast, and in the afternoon his
+breath came hoarsely, rasping in his throat. It was as the sound of
+many huntsmen blowing blasts on horns, and towards evening his breath
+came faster but fainter, like the sound of a hunt going furious to
+the distance and dying away, and he made desperate rushes towards the
+village; but Leothric still leapt about him, battering his leaden nose.
+Scarce audible now at all was the sound of his heart: it was like a
+church bell tolling beyond hills for the death of some one unknown and
+far away. Then the sun set and flamed in the village windows, and a
+chill went over the world, and in some small garden a woman sang; and
+Tharagavverug lifted up his head and starved, and his life went from
+his invulnerable body, and Leothric lay down beside him and slept. And
+later in the starlight the villagers came out and carried Leothric,
+sleeping, to the village, all praising him in whispers as they went.
+They laid him down upon a couch in a house, and danced outside in
+silence, without psaltery or cymbal. And the next day, rejoicing, to
+Allathurion they hauled the dragon-crocodile. And Leothric went with
+them, holding his battered staff; and a tall, broad man, who was smith
+of Allathurion, made a great furnace, and melted Tharagavverug away
+till only Sacnoth was left, gleaming among the ashes. Then he took one
+of the small eyes that had been chiselled out, and filed an edge on
+Sacnoth, and gradually the steel eye wore away facet by facet, but ere
+it was quite gone it had sharpened redoubtably Sacnoth. But the other
+eye they set in the butt of the hilt, and it gleamed there bluely.
+
+And that night Leothric arose in the dark and took the sword, and went
+westwards to find Gaznak; and he went through the dark forest till the
+dawn, and all the morning and till the afternoon. But in the afternoon
+he came into the open and saw in the midst of The Land Where No Man
+Goeth the fortress of Gaznak, mountainous before him, little more than
+a mile away.
+
+And Leothric saw that the land was marsh and desolate. And the fortress
+went up all white out of it, with many buttresses, and was broad below
+but narrowed higher up, and was full of gleaming windows with the light
+upon them. And near the top of it a few white clouds were floating, but
+above them some of its pinnacles reappeared. Then Leothric advanced
+into the marshes, and the eye of Tharagavverug looked out warily from
+the hilt of Sacnoth; for Tharagavverug had known the marshes well, and
+the sword nudged Leothric to the right or pulled him to the left away
+from the dangerous places, and so brought him safely to the fortress
+walls.
+
+And in the wall stood doors like precipices of steel, all studded with
+boulders of iron, and above every window were terrible gargoyles of
+stone; and the name of the fortress shone on the wall, writ large in
+letters of brass: ‘The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth.’
+
+Then Leothric drew and revealed Sacnoth, and all the gargoyles grinned,
+and the grin went flickering from face to face right up into the
+cloud-abiding gables.
+
+And when Sacnoth was revealed and all the gargoyles grinned, it was
+like the moonlight emerging from a cloud to look for the first time
+upon a field of blood, and passing swiftly over the wet faces of the
+slain that lie together in the horrible night. Then Leothric advanced
+towards a door, and it was mightier than the marble quarry, Sacremona,
+from which of old men cut enormous slabs to build the Abbey of the
+Holy Tears. Day after day they wrenched out the very ribs of the hill
+until the Abbey was builded, and it was more beautiful than anything in
+stone. Then the priests blessed Sacremona, and it had rest, and no more
+stone was ever taken from it to build the houses of men. And the hill
+stood looking southwards lonely in the sunlight, defaced by that mighty
+scar. So vast was the door of steel. And the name of the door was The
+Porte Resonant, the Way of Egress for War.
+
+Then Leothric smote upon the Porte Resonant with Sacnoth, and the echo
+of Sacnoth went ringing through the halls, and all the dragons in the
+fortress barked. And when the baying of the remotest dragon had faintly
+joined in the tumult, a window opened far up among the clouds below the
+twilit gables, and a woman screamed, and far away in Hell her father
+heard her and knew that her doom was come.
+
+And Leothric went on smiting terribly with Sacnoth, and the grey steel
+of the Porte Resonant, the Way of Egress for War, that was tempered to
+resist the swords of the world, came away in ringing slices.
+
+Then Leothric, holding Sacnoth in his hand, went in through the hole
+that he had hewn in the door, and came into the unlit, cavernous hall.
+
+An elephant fled trumpeting. And Leothric stood still, holding Sacnoth.
+When the sound of the feet of the elephant had died away in the remoter
+corridors, nothing more stirred, and the cavernous hall was still.
+
+Presently the darkness of the distant halls became musical with the
+sound of bells, all coming nearer and nearer.
+
+Still Leothric waited in the dark, and the bells rang louder and
+louder, echoing through the halls, and there appeared a procession of
+men on camels riding two by two from the interior of the fortress, and
+they were armed with scimitars of Assyrian make and were all clad with
+mail, and chain-mail hung from their helmets about their faces, and
+flapped as the camels moved. And they all halted before Leothric in the
+cavernous hall, and the camel bells clanged and stopped. And the leader
+said to Leothric:
+
+‘The Lord Gaznak has desired to see you die before him. Be pleased to
+come with us, and we can discourse by the way of the manner in which
+the Lord Gaznak has desired to see you die.’
+
+And as he said this he unwound a chain of iron that was coiled upon his
+saddle, and Leothric answered:
+
+‘I would fain go with you, for I am come to slay Gaznak.’
+
+Then all the camel-guard of Gaznak laughed hideously, disturbing the
+vampires that were asleep in the measureless vault of the roof. And the
+leader said:
+
+‘The Lord Gaznak is immortal, save for Sacnoth, and weareth armour that
+is proof even against Sacnoth himself, and hath a sword the second most
+terrible in the world.’
+
+Then Leothric said: ‘I am the Lord of the sword Sacnoth.’
+
+And he advanced towards the camel-guard of Gaznak, and Sacnoth lifted
+up and down in his hand as though stirred by an exultant pulse.
+Then the camel-guard of Gaznak fled, and the riders leaned forward
+and smote their camels with whips, and they went away with a great
+clamour of bells through colonnades and corridors and vaulted halls,
+and scattered into the inner darknesses of the fortress. When the
+last sound of them had died away, Leothric was in doubt which way to
+go, for the camel-guard was dispersed in many directions, so he went
+straight on till he came to a great stairway in the midst of the hall.
+Then Leothric set his foot in the middle of a wide step, and climbed
+steadily up the stairway for five minutes. Little light was there in
+the great hall through which Leothric ascended, for it only entered
+through arrow slits here and there, and in the world outside evening
+was waning fast. The stairway led up to two folding doors, and they
+stood a little ajar, and through the crack Leothric entered and tried
+to continue straight on, but could get no farther, for the whole room
+seemed to be full of festoons of ropes which swung from wall to wall
+and were looped and draped from the ceiling. The whole chamber was
+thick and black with them. They were soft and light to the touch, like
+fine silk, but Leothric was unable to break any one of them, and though
+they swung away from him as he pressed forward, yet by the time he
+had gone three yards they were all about him like a heavy cloak. Then
+Leothric stepped back and drew Sacnoth, and Sacnoth divided the ropes
+without a sound, and without a sound the severed pieces fell to the
+floor. Leothric went forward slowly, moving Sacnoth in front of him up
+and down as he went. When he was come into the middle of the chamber,
+suddenly, as he parted with Sacnoth a great hammock of strands, he saw
+a spider before him that was larger than a ram, and the spider looked
+at him with eyes that were little, but in which there was much sin, and
+said:
+
+‘Who are you that spoil the labour of years all done to the honour of
+Satan?’
+
+And Leothric answered: ‘I am Leothric, son of Lorendiac.’
+
+And the spider said: ‘I will make a rope at once to hang you with.’
+
+Then Leothric parted another bunch of strands, and came nearer to the
+spider as he sat making his rope, and the spider, looking up from his
+work, said: ‘What is that sword which is able to sever my ropes?’
+
+And Leothric said: ‘It is Sacnoth.’
+
+Thereat the black hair that hung over the face of the spider parted to
+left and right, and the spider frowned; then the hair fell back into
+its place, and hid everything except the sin of the little eyes which
+went on gleaming lustfully in the dark. But before Leothric could reach
+him, he climbed away with his hands, going up by one of his ropes to
+a lofty rafter, and there sat, growling. But clearing his way with
+Sacnoth, Leothric passed through the chamber, and came to the farther
+door; and the door being shut, and the handle far up out of his reach,
+he hewed his way through it with Sacnoth in the same way as he had
+through the Porte Resonant, the Way of Egress for War. And so Leothric
+came into a well-lit chamber, where Queens and Princes were banqueting
+together, all at a great table; and thousands of candles were glowing
+all about, and their light shone in the wine that the Princes drank
+and on the huge gold candelabra, and the royal faces were irradiant
+with the glow, and the white table-cloth and the silver plates and the
+jewels in the hair of the Queens, each jewel having a historian all to
+itself, who wrote no other chronicles all his days. Between the table
+and the door there stood two hundred footmen in two rows of one hundred
+facing one another. Nobody looked at Leothric as he entered through the
+hole in the door, but one of the Princes asked a question of a footman,
+and the question was passed from mouth to mouth by all the hundred
+footmen till it came to the last one nearest Leothric; and he said to
+Leothric, without looking at him:
+
+‘What do you seek here?’
+
+And Leothric answered: ‘I seek to slay Gaznak.’
+
+And footman to footman repeated all the way to the table: ‘He seeks to
+slay Gaznak.’
+
+And another question came down the line of footmen: ‘What is your name?’
+
+And the line that stood opposite took his answer back.
+
+Then one of the Princes said: ‘Take him away where we shall not hear
+his screams.’
+
+And footman repeated it to footman till it came to the last two, and
+they advanced to seize Leothric.
+
+Then Leothric showed to them his sword, saying, ‘This is Sacnoth,’ and
+both of them said to the man nearest: ‘It is Sacnoth;’ then screamed
+and fled away.
+
+And two by two, all up the double line, footman to footman repeated,
+‘It is Sacnoth,’ then screamed and fled, till the last two gave the
+message to the table, and all the rest had gone. Hurriedly then arose
+the Queens and Princes, and fled out of the chamber. And the goodly
+table, when they were all gone, looked small and disorderly and awry.
+And to Leothric, pondering in the desolate chamber by what door he
+should pass onwards, there came from far away the sounds of music, and
+he knew that it was the magical musicians playing to Gaznak while he
+slept.
+
+Then Leothric, walking towards the distant music, passed out by the
+door opposite to the one through which he had cloven his entrance, and
+so passed into a chamber vast as the other, in which were many women,
+weirdly beautiful. And they all asked him of his quest, and when they
+heard that it was to slay Gaznak, they all besought him to tarry among
+them, saying that Gaznak was immortal, save for Sacnoth, and also that
+they had need of a knight to protect them from the wolves that rushed
+round and round the wainscot all the night and sometimes broke in upon
+them through the mouldering oak. Perhaps Leothric had been tempted to
+tarry had they been human women, for theirs was a strange beauty, but
+he perceived that instead of eyes they had little flames that flickered
+in their sockets, and knew them to be the fevered dreams of Gaznak.
+Therefore he said:
+
+‘I have a business with Gaznak and with Sacnoth,’ and passed on through
+the chamber.
+
+And at the name of Sacnoth those women screamed, and the flames of
+their eyes sank low and dwindled to sparks.
+
+And Leothric left them, and, hewing with Sacnoth, passed through the
+farther door.
+
+Outside he felt the night air on his face, and found that he stood upon
+a narrow way between two abysses. To left and right of him, as far as
+he could see, the walls of the fortress ended in a profound precipice,
+though the roof still stretched above him; and before him lay the two
+abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth
+and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went
+the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the
+abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress,
+Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped
+on to the way, which was scarcely a stride in width, and moved along
+it holding Sacnoth naked. And to and fro beneath him in each abyss
+whirred the wings of vampires passing up and down, all giving praise to
+Satan as they flew. Presently he perceived the dragon Thok lying upon
+the way, pretending to sleep, and his tail hung down into one of the
+abysses.
+
+And Leothric went towards him, and when he was quite close Thok rushed
+at Leothric.
+
+And he smote deep with Sacnoth, and Thok tumbled into the abyss,
+screaming, and his limbs made a whirring in the darkness as he fell,
+and he fell till his scream sounded no louder than a whistle and then
+could be heard no more. Once or twice Leothric saw a star blink for an
+instant and reappear again, and this momentary eclipse of a few stars
+was all that remained in the world of the body of Thok. And Lunk, the
+brother of Thok, who had lain a little behind him, saw that this must
+be Sacnoth and fled lumbering away. And all the while that he walked
+between the abysses, the mighty vault of the roof of the fortress still
+stretched over Leothric’s head, all filled with gloom. Now, when the
+further side of the abyss came into view, Leothric saw a chamber that
+opened with innumerable arches upon the twin abysses, and the pillars
+of the arches went away into the distance and vanished in the gloom to
+left and right.
+
+Far down the dim precipice on which the pillars stood he could see
+windows small and closely barred, and between the bars there showed at
+moments, and disappeared again, things that I shall not speak of.
+
+There was no light here except for the great Southern stars that shone
+below the abysses, and here and there in the chamber through the arches
+lights that moved furtively without the sound of footfall.
+
+Then Leothric stepped from the way, and entered the great chamber.
+
+Even to himself he seemed but a tiny dwarf as he walked under one of
+those colossal arches.
+
+The last faint light of evening flickered through a window painted in
+sombre colours commemorating the achievements of Satan upon Earth. High
+up in the wall the window stood, and the streaming lights of candles
+lower down moved stealthily away.
+
+Other light there was none, save for a faint blue glow from the steel
+eye of Tharagavverug that peered restlessly about it from the hilt of
+Sacnoth. Heavily in the chamber hung the clammy odour of a large and
+deadly beast.
+
+Leothric moved forward slowly with the blade of Sacnoth in front of him
+feeling for a foe, and the eye in the hilt of it looking out behind.
+
+Nothing stirred.
+
+If anything lurked behind the pillars of the colonnade that held aloft
+the roof, it neither breathed nor moved.
+
+The music of the magical musicians sounded from very near.
+
+Suddenly the great doors on the far side of the chamber opened to left
+and right. For some moments Leothric saw nothing move, and waited
+clutching Sacnoth. Then Wong Bongerok came towards him, breathing.
+
+This was the last and faithfullest guard of Gaznak, and came from
+slobbering just now his master’s hand.
+
+More as a child than a dragon was Gaznak wont to treat him, giving him
+often in his fingers tender pieces of man all smoking from his table.
+
+Long and low was Wong Bongerok, and subtle about the eyes, and he came
+breathing malice against Leothric out of his faithful breast, and
+behind him roared the armoury of his tail, as when sailors drag the
+cable of the anchor all rattling down the deck.
+
+And well Wong Bongerok knew that he now faced Sacnoth, for it had been
+his wont to prophesy quietly to himself for many years as he lay curled
+at the feet of Gaznak.
+
+And Leothric stepped forward into the blast of his breath, and lifted
+Sacnoth to strike.
+
+But when Sacnoth was lifted up, the eye of Tharagavverug in the butt of
+the hilt beheld the dragon and perceived his subtlety.
+
+For he opened his mouth wide, and revealed to Leothric the ranks of
+his sabre teeth, and his leather gums flapped upwards. But while
+Leothric made to smite at his head, he shot forward scorpion-wise over
+his head the length of his armoured tail. All this the eye perceived
+in the hilt of Sacnoth, who smote suddenly sideways. Not with the
+edge smote Sacnoth, for, had he done so, the severed end of the tail
+had still come hurtling on, as some pine tree that the avalanche has
+hurled point foremost from the cliff right through the broad breast of
+some mountaineer. So had Leothric been transfixed; but Sacnoth smote
+sideways with the flat of his blade, and sent the tail whizzing over
+Leothric’s left shoulder; and it rasped upon his armour as it went, and
+left a groove upon it. Sideways then at Leothric smote the foiled tail
+of Wong Bongerok, and Sacnoth parried, and the tail went shrieking up
+the blade and over Leothric’s head. Then Leothric and Wong Bongerok
+fought sword to tooth, and the sword smote as only Sacnoth can, and the
+evil faithful life of Wong Bongerok the dragon went out through the
+wide wound.
+
+Then Leothric walked on past that dead monster, and the armoured
+body still quivered a little. And for a while it was like all the
+ploughshares in a county working together in one field behind tired and
+struggling horses; then the quivering ceased, and Wong Bongerok lay
+still to rust.
+
+And Leothric went on to the open gates, and Sacnoth dripped quietly
+along the floor.
+
+By the open gates through which Wong Bongerok had entered, Leothric
+came into a corridor echoing with music. This was the first place from
+which Leothric could see anything above his head, for hitherto the roof
+had ascended to mountainous heights and had stretched indistinct in the
+gloom. But along the narrow corridor hung huge bells low and near to
+his head, and the width of each brazen bell was from wall to wall, and
+they were one behind the other. And as he passed under each the bell
+uttered, and its voice was mournful and deep, like to the voice of a
+bell speaking to a man for the last time when he is newly dead. Each
+bell uttered once as Leothric came under it, and their voices sounded
+solemnly and wide apart at ceremonious intervals. For if he walked
+slow, these bells came closer together, and when he walked swiftly they
+moved farther apart. And the echoes of each bell tolling above his head
+went on before him whispering to the others. Once when he stopped they
+all jangled angrily till he went on again.
+
+Between these slow and boding notes came the sound of the magical
+musicians. They were playing a dirge now very mournfully.
+
+And at last Leothric came to the end of the Corridor of the Bells, and
+beheld there a small black door. And all the corridor behind him was
+full of the echoes of the tolling, and they all muttered to one another
+about the ceremony; and the dirge of the musicians came floating slowly
+through them like a procession of foreign elaborate guests, and all of
+them boded ill to Leothric.
+
+The black door opened at once to the hand of Leothric, and he found
+himself in the open air in a wide court paved with marble. High over it
+shone the moon, summoned there by the hand of Gaznak.
+
+There Gaznak slept, and around him sat his magical musicians, all
+playing upon strings. And, even sleeping, Gaznak was clad in armour,
+and only his wrists and face and neck were bare.
+
+But the marvel of that place was the dreams of Gaznak; for beyond the
+wide court slept a dark abyss, and into the abyss there poured a white
+cascade of marble stairways, and widened out below into terraces and
+balconies with fair white statues on them, and descended again in a
+wide stairway, and came to lower terraces in the dark, where swart
+uncertain shapes went to and fro. All these were the dreams of Gaznak,
+and issued from his mind, and, becoming gleaming marble, passed over
+the edge of the abyss as the musicians played. And all the while out
+of the mind of Gaznak, lulled by that strange music, went spires and
+pinnacles beautiful and slender, ever ascending skywards. And the
+marble dreams moved slow in time to the music. When the bells tolled
+and the musicians played their dirge, ugly gargoyles came out suddenly
+all over the spires and pinnacles, and great shadows passed swiftly
+down the steps and terraces, and there was hurried whispering in the
+abyss.
+
+When Leothric stepped from the black door, Gaznak opened his eyes. He
+looked neither to left nor right, but stood up at once facing Leothric.
+
+Then the magicians played a deathspell on their strings, and there
+arose a humming along the blade of Sacnoth as he turned the spell
+aside. When Leothric dropped not down, and they heard the humming of
+Sacnoth, the magicians arose and fled, all wailing, as they went, upon
+their strings.
+
+Then Gaznak drew out screaming from its sheath the sword that was the
+mightiest in the world except for Sacnoth, and slowly walked towards
+Leothric; and he smiled as he walked, although his own dreams had
+foretold his doom. And when Leothric and Gaznak came together, each
+looked at each, and neither spoke a word; but they smote both at once,
+and their swords met, and each sword knew the other and from whence he
+came. And whenever the sword of Gaznak smote on the blade of Sacnoth
+it rebounded gleaming, as hail from off slated roofs; but whenever it
+fell upon the armour of Leothric, it stripped it off in sheets. And
+upon Gaznak’s armour Sacnoth fell oft and furiously, but ever he came
+back snarling, leaving no mark behind, and as Gaznak fought he held his
+left hand hovering close over his head. Presently Leothric smote fair
+and fiercely at his enemy’s neck, but Gaznak, clutching his own head by
+the hair, lifted it high aloft, and Sacnoth went cleaving through an
+empty space. Then Gaznak replaced his head upon his neck, and all the
+while fought nimbly with his sword; and again and again Leothric swept
+with Sacnoth at Gaznak’s bearded neck, and ever the left hand of Gaznak
+was quicker than the stroke, and the head went up and the sword rushed
+vainly under it.
+
+And the ringing fight went on till Leothric’s armour lay all round him
+on the floor and the marble was splashed with his blood, and the sword
+of Gaznak was notched like a saw from meeting the blade of Sacnoth.
+Still Gaznak stood unwounded and smiling still.
+
+At last Leothric looked at the throat of Gaznak and aimed with Sacnoth,
+and again Gaznak lifted his head by the hair; but not at his throat
+flew Sacnoth, for Leothric struck instead at the lifted hand, and
+through the wrist of it went Sacnoth whirring, as a scythe goes through
+the stem of a single flower.
+
+And bleeding, the severed hand fell to the floor; and at once blood
+spurted from the shoulders of Gaznak and dripped from the fallen head,
+and the tall pinnacles went down into the earth, and the wide fair
+terraces all rolled away, and the court was gone like the dew, and a
+wind came and the colonnades drifted thence, and all the colossal halls
+of Gaznak fell. And the abysses closed up suddenly as the mouth of a
+man who, having told a tale, will for ever speak no more.
+
+Then Leothric looked around him in the marshes where the night mist was
+passing away, and there was no fortress nor sound of dragon or mortal,
+only beside him lay an old man, wizened and evil and dead, whose head
+and hand were severed from his body.
+
+And gradually over the wide lands the dawn was coming up, and ever
+growing in beauty as it came, like to the peal of an organ played by a
+master’s hand, growing louder and lovelier as the soul of the master
+warms, and at last giving praise with all its mighty voice.
+
+Then the birds sang, and Leothric went homeward, and left the marshes
+and came to the dark wood, and the light of the dawn ascending lit
+him upon his way. And into Allathurion he came ere noon, and with him
+brought the evil wizened head, and the people rejoiced, and their
+nights of trouble ceased.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
+
+This is the tale of the vanquishing of The Fortress Unvanquishable,
+Save For Sacnoth, and of its passing away, as it is told and believed
+by those who love the mystic days of old.
+
+Others have said, and vainly claim to prove, that a fever came to
+Allathurion, and went away; and that this same fever drove Leothric
+into the marshes by night, and made him dream there and act violently
+with a sword.
+
+And others again say that there hath been no town of Allathurion, and
+that Leothric never lived.
+
+Peace to them. The gardener hath gathered up this autumn’s leaves. Who
+shall see them again, or who wot of them? And who shall say what hath
+befallen in the days of long ago?
+
+
+
+
+The Lord of Cities
+
+
+I came one day upon a road that wandered so aimlessly that it was
+suited to my mood, so I followed it, and it led me presently among deep
+woods. Somewhere in the midst of them Autumn held his court, sitting
+wreathed with gorgeous garlands; and it was the day before his annual
+festival of the Dance of Leaves, the courtly festival upon which hungry
+Winter rushes mob-like, and there arise the furious cries of the
+North Wind triumphing, and all the splendour and grace of the woods
+is gone, and Autumn flees away, discrowned and forgotten, and never
+again returns. Other Autumns arise, other Autumns, and fall before
+other Winters. A road led away to the left, but my road went straight
+on. The road to the left had a trodden appearance; there were wheel
+tracks on it, and it seemed the correct way to take. It looked as if
+no one could have any business with the road that led straight on and
+up the hill. Therefore I went straight on and up the hill; and here
+and there on the road grew blades of grass undisturbed in the repose
+and hush that the road had earned from going up and down the world;
+for you can go by this road, as you can go by all roads, to London,
+to Lincoln, to the North of Scotland, to the West of Wales, and to
+Wrellisford where roads end. Presently the woods ended, and I came to
+the open fields and at the same moment to the top of the hill, and saw
+the high places of Somerset and the downs of Wilts spread out along
+the horizon. Suddenly I saw underneath me the village of Wrellisford,
+with no sound in its street but the voice of the Wrellis roaring as he
+tumbled over a weir above the village. So I followed my road down over
+the crest of the hill, and the road became more languid as I descended,
+and less and less concerned with the cares of a highway. Here a spring
+broke out in the middle of it, and here another. The road never heeded.
+A stream ran right across it, still it straggled on. Suddenly it gave
+up the minimum property that a road should possess, and, renouncing its
+connection with High Streets, its lineage of Piccadilly, shrank to one
+side and became an unpretentious footpath. Then it led me to the old
+bridge over the stream, and thus I came to Wrellisford, and found after
+travelling in many lands a village with no wheel tracks in its street.
+On the other side of the bridge, my friend the road struggled a few
+yards up a grassy slope, and there ceased. Over all the village hung a
+great stillness, with the roar of the Wrellis cutting right across it,
+and there came occasionally the bark of a dog that kept watch over the
+broken stillness and over the sanctity of that untravelled road. That
+terrible and wasting fever that, unlike so many plagues, comes not from
+the East but from the West, the fever of hurry, had not come here—only
+the Wrellis hurried on his eternal quest, but it was a calm and placid
+hurry that gave one time for song. It was in the early afternoon, and
+nobody was about. Either they worked beyond the mysterious valley that
+nursed Wrellisford and hid it from the world, or else they secluded
+themselves within their old-time houses that were roofed with tiles of
+stone. I sat down upon the old stone bridge and watched the Wrellis,
+who seemed to me to be the only traveller that came from far away into
+this village where roads end, and passed on beyond it. And yet the
+Wrellis comes singing out of eternity, and tarries for a very little
+while in the village where roads end, and passes on into eternity
+again; and so surely do all that dwell in Wrellisford. I wondered as
+I leaned upon the bridge in what place the Wrellis would first find
+the sea, whether as he wound idly through meadows on his long quest he
+would suddenly behold him, and, leaping down over some rocky cliff,
+take to him at once the message of the hills. Or whether, widening
+slowly into some grand and tidal estuary, he would take his waste of
+waters to the sea and the might of the river should meet with the might
+of the waves, like to two Emperors clad in gleaming mail meeting midway
+between two hosts of war; and the little Wrellis would become a haven
+for returning ships and a setting-out place for adventurous men.
+
+A little beyond the bridge there stood an old mill with a ruined
+roof, and a small branch of the Wrellis rushed through its emptiness
+shouting, like a boy playing alone in a corridor of some desolate
+house. The mill-wheel was gone, but there lay there still great bars
+and wheels and cogs, the bones of some dead industry. I know not
+what industry was once lord in that house, I know not what retinue
+of workers mourns him now; I only know who is lord there today in
+all those empty chambers. For as soon as I entered, I saw a whole
+wall draped with his marvellous black tapestry, without price because
+inimitable and too delicate to pass from hand to hand among merchants.
+I looked at the wonderful complexity of its infinite threads, my
+finger sank into it for more than an inch without feeling the touch;
+so black it was and so carefully wrought, sombrely covering the whole
+of the wall, that it might have been worked to commemorate the deaths
+of all that ever lived there, as indeed it was. I looked through a
+hole in the wall into an inner chamber where a worn-out driving band
+went among many wheels, and there this priceless inimitable stuff not
+merely clothed the walls but hung from bars and ceiling in beautiful
+draperies, in marvellous festoons. Nothing was ugly in this desolate
+house, for the busy artist’s soul of its present lord had beautified
+everything in its desolation. It was the unmistakable work of the
+spider, in whose house I was, and the house was utterly desolate but
+for him, and silent but for the roar of the Wrellis and the shout of
+the little stream. Then I turned homewards; and as I went up and over
+the hill and lost the sight of the village, I saw the road whiten and
+harden and gradually broaden out till the tracks of wheels appeared;
+and it went afar to take the young men of Wrellisford into the wide
+ways of the earth—to the new West and the mysterious East, and into the
+troubled South.
+
+And that night, when the house was still and sleep was far off, hushing
+hamlets and giving ease to cities, my fancy wandered up that aimless
+road and came suddenly to Wrellisford. And it seemed to me that the
+travelling of so many people for so many years between Wrellisford
+and John o’ Groat’s, talking to one another as they went or muttering
+alone, had given the road a voice. And it seemed to me that night that
+the road spoke to the river by Wrellisford bridge, speaking with the
+voice of many pilgrims. And the road said to the river: ‘I rest here.
+How is it with you?’
+
+And the river, who is always speaking, said: ‘I rest nowhere from doing
+the Work of the World. I carry the murmur of inner lands to the sea,
+and to the abysses voices of the hills.’
+
+‘It is I,’ said the road, ‘that do the Work of the World, and take from
+city to city the rumour of each. There is nothing higher than Man and
+the making of cities. What do you do for Man?’
+
+And the river said: ‘Beauty and song are higher than Man. I carry the
+news seaward of the first song of the thrush after the furious retreat
+of winter northward, and the first timid anemone learns from me that
+she is safe and that spring has truly come. Oh but the song of all the
+birds in spring is more beautiful than Man, and the first coming of the
+hyacinth more delectable than his face! When spring is fallen upon the
+days of summer, I carry away with mournful joy at night petal by petal
+the rhododendron’s bloom. No lit procession of purple kings is nigh so
+fair as that. No beautiful death of well-beloved men hath such a glory
+of forlornness. And I bear far away the pink and white petals of the
+apple-blossom’s youth when the laborious time comes for his work in
+the world and for the bearing of apples. And I am robed each day and
+every night anew with the beauty of heaven, and I make lovely visions
+of the trees. But Man! What is Man? In the ancient parliament of the
+elder hills, when the grey ones speak together, they say nought of Man,
+but concern themselves only with their brethren the stars. Or when
+they wrap themselves in purple cloaks at evening, they lament some old
+irreparable wrong, or, uttering some mountain hymn, all mourn the set
+of sun.’
+
+‘Your beauty,’ said the road, ‘and the beauty of the sky, and of the
+rhododendron blossom and of spring, live only in the mind of Man, and
+except in the mind of Man the mountains have no voices. Nothing is
+beautiful that has not been seen by Man’s eye. Or if your rhododendron
+blossom was beautiful for a moment, it soon withered and was drowned,
+and spring soon passes away; beauty can only live on in the mind of
+Man. I bring thought into the mind of Man swiftly from distant places
+every day. I know the Telegraph—I know him well; he and I have walked
+for hundreds of miles together. There is no work in the world except
+for Man and the making of his cities. I take wares to and fro from city
+to city.’
+
+‘My little stream in the field there,’ said the river, ‘used to make
+wares in that house for awhile once.’
+
+‘Ah,’ said the road, ‘I remember, but I brought cheaper ones from
+distant cities. Nothing is of any importance but making cities for Man.’
+
+‘I know so little about him,’ said the river, ‘but I have a great deal
+of work to do—I have all this water to send down to the sea; and then
+tomorrow or next day all the leaves of Autumn will be coming this way.
+It will be very beautiful. The sea is a very, very wonderful place.
+I know all about it; I have heard shepherd boys singing of it, and
+sometimes before a storm the gulls come up. It is a place all blue and
+shining and full of pearls, and has in it coral islands and isles of
+spice, and storms and galleons and the bones of Drake. The sea is much
+greater than Man. When I come to the sea, he will know that I have
+worked well for him. But I must hurry, for I have much to do. This
+bridge delays me a little; some day I will carry it away.’
+
+‘Oh, you must not do that,’ said the road.
+
+‘Oh, not for a long time,’ said the river. ‘Some centuries perhaps—and
+I have much to do besides. There is my song to sing, for instance, and
+that alone is more beautiful than any noise that Man makes.’
+
+‘All work is for Man,’ said the road, ‘and for the building of cities.
+There is no beauty or romance or mystery in the sea except for the men
+that sail abroad upon it, and for those that stay at home and dream of
+them. As for your song, it rings night and morning, year in, year out,
+in the ears of men that are born in Wrellisford; at night it is part
+of their dreams, at morning it is the voice of day, and so it becomes
+part of their souls. But the song is not beautiful in itself. I take
+these men with your song in their souls up over the edge of the valley
+and a long way off beyond, and I am a strong and dusty road up there,
+and they go with your song in their souls and turn it into music and
+gladden cities. But nothing is the Work of the World except work for
+Man.’
+
+‘I wish I was quite sure about the Work of the World,’ said the stream;
+‘I wish I knew for certain for whom we work. I feel almost sure that
+it is for the sea. He is very great and beautiful. I think that there
+can be no greater master than the sea. I think that some day he may
+be so full of romance and mystery and sound of sheep bells and murmur
+of mist-hidden hills, which we streams shall have brought him, that
+there will be no more music or beauty left in the world, and all the
+world will end; and perhaps the streams shall gather at the last, we
+all together, to the sea. Or perhaps the sea will give us at the last
+unto each one his own again, giving back all that he has garnered in
+the years—the little petals of the apple-blossom and the mourned ones
+of the rhododendron, and our old visions of the trees and sky; so many
+memories have left the hills. But who may say? For who knows the tides
+of the sea?’
+
+‘Be sure that it is all for Man,’ said the road. ‘For Man and the
+making of cities.’
+
+Something had come near on utterly silent feet.
+
+‘Peace, peace!’ it said. ‘You disturb the queenly night, who, having
+come into this valley, is a guest in my dark halls. Let us have an end
+to this discussion.’
+
+It was the spider who spoke.
+
+‘The Work of the World is the making of cities and palaces. But it
+is not for Man. What is Man? He only prepares my cities for me, and
+mellows them. All his works are ugly, his richest tapestries are coarse
+and clumsy. He is a noisy idler. He only protects me from mine enemy
+the wind; and the beautiful work in my cities, the curving outlines and
+the delicate weavings, is all mine. Ten years to a hundred it takes to
+build a city, for five or six hundred more it mellows, and is prepared
+for me; then I inhabit it, and hide away all that is ugly, and draw
+beautiful lines about it to and fro. There is nothing so beautiful as
+cities and palaces; they are the loveliest places in the world, because
+they are the stillest, and so most like the stars. They are noisy at
+first, for a little, before I come to them; they have ugly corners not
+yet rounded off, and coarse tapestries, and then they become ready for
+me and my exquisite work, and are quite silent and beautiful. And there
+I entertain the regal nights when they come there jewelled with stars,
+and all their train of silence, and regale them with costly dust.
+Already nods, in a city that I wot of, a lonely sentinel whose lords
+are dead, who grows too old and sleepy to drive away the gathering
+silence that infests the streets; tomorrow I go to see if he be still
+at his post. For me Babylon was built, and rocky Tyre; and still men
+build my cities! All the Work of the World is the making of cities, and
+all of them I inherit.’
+
+
+
+
+The Doom of La Traviata
+
+
+Evening stole up out of mysterious lands and came down on the streets
+of Paris, and the things of the day withdrew themselves and hid away,
+and the beautiful city was strangely altered, and with it the hearts
+of men. And with lights and music, and in silence and in the dark, the
+other life arose, the life that knows the night, and dark cats crept
+from the houses and moved to silent places, and dim streets became
+haunted with dusk shapes. At this hour in a mean house, near to the
+Moulin Rouge, La Traviata died; and her death was brought to her by
+her own sins, and not by the years of God. But the soul of La Traviata
+drifted blindly about the streets where she had sinned till it struck
+against the wall of Notre Dame de Paris. Thence it rushed upwards,
+as the sea mist when it beats against a cliff, and streamed away to
+Paradise, and was there judged. And it seemed to me, as I watched from
+my place of dreaming, when La Traviata came and stood before the seat
+of judgment, that clouds came rushing up from the far Paradisal hills
+and gathered together over the head of God, and became one black cloud;
+and the clouds moved swiftly as shadows of the night when a lantern is
+swung in the hand, and more and more clouds rushed up, and ever more
+and more, and, as they gathered, the cloud a little above the head of
+God became no larger, but only grew blacker and blacker. And the halos
+of the saints settled lower upon their heads and narrowed and became
+pale, and the singing of the choirs of the seraphim faltered and sunk
+low, and the converse of the blessed suddenly ceased. Then a stern look
+came into the face of God, so that the seraphim turned away and left
+Him, and the saints. Then God commanded, and seven great angels rose up
+slowly through the clouds that carpet Paradise, and there was pity on
+their faces, and their eyes were closed. Then God pronounced judgment,
+and the lights of Paradise went out, and the azure crystal windows that
+look towards the world, and the windows rouge and verd, became dark and
+colourless, and I saw no more. Presently the seven great angels came
+out by one of Heaven’s gates and set their faces Hellwards, and four
+of them carried the young soul of La Traviata, and one of them went
+on before and one of them followed behind. These six trod with mighty
+strides the long and dusty road that is named the Way of the Damned.
+But the seventh flew above them all the way, and the light of the fires
+of Hell that was hidden from the six by the dust of that dreadful road
+flared on the feathers of his breast.
+
+Presently the seven angels, as they swept Hellwards, uttered speech.
+
+‘She is very young,’ they said; and ‘She is very beautiful,’ they said;
+and they looked long at the soul of La Traviata, looking not at the
+stains of sin, but at that portion of her soul wherewith she had loved
+her sister a long while dead, who flitted now about an orchard on one
+of Heaven’s hills with a low sunlight ever on her face, who communed
+daily with the saints when they passed that way going to bless the
+dead from Heaven’s utmost edge. And as they looked long at the beauty
+of all that remained beautiful in her soul they said: ‘It is but a
+young soul;’ and they would have taken her to one of Heaven’s hills,
+and would there have given her a cymbal and a dulcimer, but they knew
+that the Paradisal gates were clamped and barred against La Traviata.
+And they would have taken her to a valley in the world where there
+were a great many flowers and a loud sound of streams, where birds
+were singing always and church bells rang on Sabbaths, only this they
+durst not do. So they swept onwards nearer and nearer Hell. But when
+they were come quite close and the glare was on their faces, and they
+saw the gates already divide and prepare to open outwards, they said:
+‘Hell is a terrible city, and she is tired of cities;’ then suddenly
+they dropped her by the side of the road, and wheeled and flew away.
+But into a great pink flower that was horrible and lovely grew the
+soul of La Traviata; and it had in it two eyes but no eyelids, and
+it stared constantly into the faces of all the passers-by that went
+along the dusty road to Hell; and the flower grew in the glare of the
+lights of Hell, and withered but could not die; only, one petal turned
+back towards the heavenly hills as an ivy leaf turns outwards to the
+day, and in the soft and silvery light of Paradise it withered not nor
+faded, but heard at times the commune of the saints coming murmuring
+from the distance, and sometimes caught the scent of orchards wafted
+from the heavenly hills, and felt a faint breeze cool it every evening
+at the hour when the saints to Heaven’s edge went forth to bless the
+dead.
+
+But the Lord arose with His sword, and scattered His disobedient angels
+as a thresher scatters chaff.
+
+
+
+
+On The Dry Land
+
+
+Over the marshes hung the gorgeous night with all his wandering bands
+of nomad stars, and his whole host of still ones blinked and watched.
+
+Over the safe dry land to eastward, grey and cold, the first clear
+pallor of dawn was coming up above the heads of the immortal gods.
+
+Then, as they neared at last the safety of the dry land, Love looked at
+the man whom he had led for so long through the marshes, and saw that
+his hair was white, for it was shining in the pallor of the dawn.
+
+Then they stepped together on to the land, and the old man sat down
+weary on the grass, for they had wandered in the marshes for many
+years; and the light of the grey dawn widened above the heads of the
+gods.
+
+And Love said to the old man, ‘I will leave you now.’
+
+And the old man made no answer, but wept softly.
+
+Then Love was grieved in his little careless heart, and he said: ‘You
+must not be sorry that I go, nor yet regret me, nor care for me at all.
+
+‘I am a very foolish child, and was never kind to you, nor friendly. I
+never cared for your great thoughts, or for what was good in you, but
+perplexed you by leading you up and down the perilous marshes. And I
+was so heartless that, had you perished where I led you, it would have
+been nought to me, and I only stayed with you because you were good to
+play with.
+
+‘And I am cruel and altogether worthless and not such a one as any
+should be sorry for when I go, or one to be regretted, or even cared
+for at all.’
+
+And still the old man spoke not, but wept softly; and Love grieved
+bitterly in his kindly heart.
+
+And Love said: ‘Because I am so small my strength has been concealed
+from you, and the evil that I have done. But my strength is great, and
+I have used it unjustly. Often I pushed you from the causeway through
+the marshes, and cared not if you drowned. Often I mocked you, and
+caused others to mock you. And often I led you among those that hated
+me, and laughed when they revenged themselves upon you.
+
+‘So weep not, for there is no kindness in my heart, but only murder and
+foolishness, and I am no companion for one so wise as you, but am so
+frivolous and silly that I laughed at your noble dreams and hindered
+all your deeds. See now, you have found me out, and now you will send
+me away, and here you will live at ease, and, undisturbed, have noble
+dreams of the immortal gods.
+
+‘See now, here is dawn and safety, and _there_ is darkness and peril.’
+
+Still the old man wept softly.
+
+Then Love said: ‘Is it thus with you?’ and his voice was grave now
+and quiet. ‘Are you so troubled? Old friend of so many years, there
+is grief in my heart for you. Old friend of perilous ventures, I must
+leave you now. But I will send my brother soon to you—my little brother
+Death. And he will come up out of the marshes to you, and will not
+forsake you, but will be true to you as I have not been true.’
+
+And dawn grew brighter over the immortal gods, and the old man smiled
+through his tears, which glistened wondrously in the increasing light.
+But Love went down to the night and to the marshes, looking backward
+over his shoulder as he went, and smiling beautifully about his eyes.
+And in the marshes whereunto he went, in the midst of the gorgeous
+night, and under the wandering bands of nomad stars, rose shouts of
+laughter and the sounds of the dance.
+
+And after a while, with his face towards the morning, Death out of the
+marshes came up tall and beautiful, and with a faint smile shadowy on
+his lips, and lifted in his arms the lonely man, being gentle with him,
+and, murmuring with his low deep voice an ancient song, carried him to
+the morning to the gods.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10806 ***