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+Project Gutenberg's The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories, by Lord Dunsany
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
+
+Author: Lord Dunsany
+
+Release Date: January 23, 2004 [EBook #10806]
+[This file was last updated on September 21, 2005]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF WELLERAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tom Harris
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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 Achćans 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 Achćans; 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 of The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
+by Lord Dunsany
+
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