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Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
And the day came when Athelvok should go. And Hilnaric said to
him:
“Will you not indeed most surely come back again, having just looked
over the summit of Poltarnees?”
Athelvok answered: “I will indeed come back, for thy voice is more
beautiful than the hymn of the priests when they chant and praise
the Sea, and though many tributary seas ran down into Oriathon and
he and all the others poured their beauty into one pool below me, yet
would I return swearing that thou wert fairer than they.”
And Hilnaric answered:
“The wisdom of my heart tells me, or old knowledge or prophecy, or
some strange lore, that I shall never hear thy voice again. And for
this I give thee my forgiveness.”
But he, repeating the oath that he had sworn, set out, looking often
backwards until the slope became too steep and his face was set to
the rock. It was in the morning that he started, and he climbed all the
day with little rest, where every foot-hole was smooth with many
feet. Before he reached the top the sun disappeared from him, and
darker and darker grew the Inner Lands. Then he pushed on so as to
see before dark whatever thing Poltarnees had to show. The dusk was
deep over the Inner Lands, and the lights of cities twinkled through
the sea-mist when he came to Poltarnees’s summit, and the sun
before him was not yet gone from the sky.
And there below him was the old wrinkled Sea, smiling and
murmuring song. And he nursed little ships with gleaming sails, and
in his hands were old regretted wrecks, and masts all studded over
with golden nails that he had rent in anger out of beautiful galleons.
And the glory of the sun was among the surges as they brought
driftwood out of isles of spice, tossing their golden heads. And the
grey currents crept away to the south like companionless serpents
that love something afar with a restless, deadly love. And the whole
plain of water glittering with late sunlight, and the surges and the
currents and the white sails of ships were all together like the face of
a strange new god that has looked a man for the first time in the eyes
at the moment of his death; and Athelvok, looking on the wonderful
Sea, knew why it was that the dead never return, for there is
something that the dead feel and know, and the living would never
understand even though the dead should come and speak to them
about it. And there was the Sea smiling at him, glad with the glory of
the sun. And there was a haven there for homing ships, and a sunlit
city stood upon its marge, and people walked about the streets of it
clad in the unimagined merchandise of far sea-bordering lands.
An easy slope of loose crumbled rock went from the top of Poltarnees
to the shore of the Sea.
For a long while Athelvok stood there regretfully, knowing that there
had come something into his soul that no one in the Inner Lands
could understand, where the thoughts of their minds had gone no
farther than the three little kingdoms. Then, looking long upon the
wandering ships, and the marvellous merchandise from alien lands,
and the unknown colour that wreathed the brows of the Sea, he
turned his face to the darkness and the Inner Lands.
At that moment the Sea sang a dirge at sunset for all the harm that
he had done in anger and all the ruin wrought on adventurous ships;
and there were tears in the voice of the tyrannous Sea, for he had
loved the galleons that he had overwhelmed, and he called all men to
him and all living things that he might make amends, because he had
loved the bones that he had strewn afar. And Athelvok turned and set
one foot upon the crumbled slope, and then another, and walked a
little way to be nearer to the Sea, and then a dream came upon him
and he felt that men had wronged the lovely Sea because he had been
angry a little, because he had been sometimes cruel; he felt that there
was trouble among the tides of the Sea because he had loved the
galleons who were dead. Still he walked on and the crumbled stones
rolled with him, and just as the twilight faded and a star appeared he
came to the golden shore, and walked on till the surges were about
his knees, and he heard the prayer-like blessings of the Sea. Long he
stood thus, while the stars came out above him and shone again in
the surges; more stars came wheeling in their courses up from the
Sea, lights twinkled out through all the haven city, lanterns were
slung from the ships, the purple night burned on; and Earth, to the
eyes of the gods as they sat afar, glowed as with one flame. Then
Athelvok went into the haven city; there he met many who had left
the Inner Lands before him; none of them wished to return to the
people who had not seen the Sea; many of them had forgotten the
three little kingdoms, and it was rumoured that one man, who had
once tried to return, had found the shifting, crumbled slope
impossible to climb.
Hilnaric never married. But her dowry was set aside to build a
temple wherein men curse the ocean.
Once every year, with solemn rite and ceremony, they curse the tides
of the Sea; and the moon looks in and hates them.
 Blagdaross

n a waste place strewn with bricks in the outskirts of a

town twilight was falling. A star or two appeared over
the smoke, and distant windows lit mysterious lights.
The stillness deepened and the loneliness. Then all the
outcast things that are silent by day found voices.
An old cork spoke first. He said: “I grew in Andalusian woods, but
never listened to the idle songs of Spain. I only grew strong in the
sunlight waiting for my destiny. One day the merchants came and
took us all away and carried us all along the shore of the sea, piled
high on the backs of donkeys, and in a town by the sea they made me
into the shape that I am now. One day they sent me northward to
Provence, and there I fulfilled my destiny. For they set me as a guard
over the bubbling wine, and I faithfully stood sentinel for twenty
years. For the first few years in the bottle that I guarded the wine
slept, dreaming of Provence; but as the years went on he grew
stronger and stronger, until at last whenever a man went by the wine
would put out all his might against me, saying: ‘Let me go free; let
me go free!’ And every year his strength increased, and he grew more
clamorous when men went by, but never availed to hurl me from my
post. But when I had powerfully held him for twenty years they
brought him to the banquet and took me from my post, and the wine
arose rejoicing and leapt through the veins of men and exalted their
souls within them till they stood up in their places and sang
Provençal songs. But me they cast away—me that had been sentinel
for twenty years, and was still as strong and staunch as when first I
went on guard. Now I am an outcast in a cold northern city, who
once have known the Andalusian skies and guarded long ago
Provençal suns that swam in the heart of the rejoicing wine.”
An unstruck match that somebody had dropped spoke next. “I am a
child of the sun,” he said, “and an enemy of cities; there is more in
my heart than you know of. I am a brother of Etna and Stromboli; I
have fires lurking in me that will one day rise up beautiful and
strong. We will not go into servitude on any hearth nor work
machines for our food, but we will take our own food where we find it
on that day when we are strong. There are wonderful children in my
heart whose faces shall be more lively than the rainbow; they shall
make a compact with the North wind, and he shall lead them forth;
all shall be black behind them and black above them, and there shall
be nothing beautiful in the world but them; they shall seize upon the
earth and it shall be theirs, and nothing shall stop them but our old
enemy the sea.”
Then an old broken kettle spoke, and said: “I am the friend of cities. I
sit among the slaves upon the hearth, the little flames that have been
fed with coal. When the slaves dance behind the iron bars I sit in the
middle of the dance and sing and make our masters glad. And I make
songs about the comfort of the cat, and about the malice that is
towards her in the heart of the dog, and about the crawling of the
baby, and about the ease that is in the lord of the house when we
brew the good brown tea; and sometimes when the house is very
warm and slaves and masters are glad, I rebuke the hostile winds
that prowl about the world.”
And then there spoke the piece of an old cord. “I was made in a place
of doom, and doomed men made my fibres, working without hope.
Therefore there came a grimness into my heart, so that I never let
anything go free when once I was set to bind it. Many a thing have I
bound relentlessly for months and for years; for I used to come
coiling into warehouses where the great boxes lay all open to the air,
and one of them would be suddenly closed up, and my fearful
strength would be set on him like a curse, and if his timbers groaned
when first I seized them, or if they creaked aloud in the lonely night,
thinking of woodlands out of which they came, then I only gripped
them tighter still, for the poor useless hate is in my soul of those that
made me in the place of doom. Yet, for all the things that my prison-
clutch has held, the last work that I did was to set something free. I
lay idle one night in the gloom on the warehouse floor. Nothing
stirred there, and even the spider slept. Towards midnight a great
flock of echoes suddenly leapt up from the wooden planks and
circled round the roof. A man was coming towards me all alone. And
as he came his soul was reproaching him, and I saw that there was a
great trouble between the man and his soul, for his soul would not let
him be, but went on reproaching him.
“Then the man saw me and said, ‘This at least will not fail me.’ When
I heard him say this about me, I determined that whatever he might
require of me it should be done to the uttermost. And as I made this
determination in my unaltering heart, he picked me up and stood on
an empty box that I should have bound on the morrow, and tied one
end of me to a dark rafter; and the knot was carelessly tied, because
his soul was reproaching him all the while continually and giving him
no ease. Then he made the other end of me into a noose, but when
the man’s soul saw this it stopped reproaching the man, and cried
out to him hurriedly, and besought him to be at peace with it and to
do nothing sudden; but the man went on with his work, and put the
noose down over his face and underneath his chin, and the soul
screamed horribly.
“Then the man kicked the box away with his foot, and the moment he
did this I knew that my strength was not great enough to hold him;
but I remembered that he had said I would not fail him, and I put all
my grim vigour into my fibres and held him by sheer will. Then the
soul shouted to me to give way, but I said:
“‘No; you vexed the man.’
“Then it screamed to me to leave go of the rafter, and already I was
slipping, for I only held on to it by a careless knot, but I gripped with
my prison grip and said:
“‘You vexed the man.’
“And very swiftly it said other things to me, but I answered not; and
at last the soul that vexed the man that had trusted me flew away and
left him at peace. I was never able to bind things any more, for every
one of my fibres was worn and wrenched, and even my relentless
heart was weakened by the struggle. Very soon afterwards I was
thrown out here. I have done my work.”
So they spoke among themselves, but all the while there loomed
above them the form of an old rocking-horse complaining bitterly.
He said: “I am Blagdaross. Woe is me that I should lie now an
outcast among these worthy but little people. Alas! for the days that
are gathered, and alas for the Great One that was a master and a soul
to me, whose spirit is now shrunken and can never know me again,
and no more ride abroad on knightly quests. I was Bucephalus when
he was Alexander, and carried him victorious as far as Ind. I
encountered dragons with him when he was St. George, I was the
horse of Roland fighting for Christendom, and was often Rosinante. I
fought in tourneys and went errant upon quests, and met Ulysses
and the heroes and the fairies. Or late in the evening, just before the
lamps in the nursery were put out, he would suddenly mount me,
and we would gallop through Africa. There we would pass by night
through tropic forests, and come upon dark rivers sweeping by, all
gleaming with the eyes of crocodiles, where the hippopotamus
floated down with the stream, and mysterious craft loomed suddenly
out of the dark and furtively passed away. And when we had passed
through the forest lit by the fireflies we would come to the open
plains, and gallop onwards with scarlet flamingoes flying along
beside us through the lands of dusky kings, with golden crowns upon
their heads and sceptres in their hands, who came running out of
their palaces to see us pass. Then I would wheel suddenly, and the
dust flew up from my four hoofs as I turned and we galloped home
again, and my master was put to bed. And again he would ride
abroad on another day till we came to magical fortresses guarded by
wizardry and overthrew the dragons at the gate, and ever came back
with a princess fairer than the sea.
“But my master began to grow larger in his body and smaller in his
soul, and then he rode more seldom upon quests. At last he saw gold
and never came again, and I was cast out here among these little
people.”
But while the rocking-horse was speaking two boys stole away,
unnoticed by their parents, from a house on the edge of the waste
place, and were coming across it looking for adventures. One of them
carried a broom, and when he saw the rocking-horse he said nothing,
but broke off the handle from the broom and thrust it between his
braces and his shirt on the left side. Then he mounted the rocking-
horse, and drawing forth the broomstick, which was sharp and spiky
at the end, said, “Saladin is in this desert with all his paynims, and I
am Cœur de Lion.” After a while the other boy said: “Now let me kill
Saladin too.” But Blagdaross in his wooden heart, that exulted with
thoughts of battle, said: “I am Blagdaross yet!”
 The Madness of Andelsprutz

first saw the city of Andelsprutz on an afternoon in

spring. The day was full of sunshine as I came by the
way of the fields, and all that morning I had said, “There
will be sunlight on it when I see for the first time the
beautiful conquered city whose fame has so often made
for me lovely dreams.” Suddenly I saw its fortifications lifting out of
the fields, and behind them stood its belfries. I went in by a gate and
saw its houses and streets, and a great disappointment came upon
me. For there is an air about a city, and it has a way with it, whereby
a man may recognize one from another at once. There are cities full
of happiness and cities full of pleasure, and cities full of gloom. There
are cities with their faces to heaven, and some with their faces to
earth; some have a way of looking at the past and others look at the
future; some notice you if you come among them, others glance at
you, others let you go by. Some love the cities that are their
neighbours, others are dear to the plains and to the heath; some
cities are bare to the wind, others have purple cloaks and others
brown cloaks, and some are clad in white. Some tell the old tale of
their infancy, with others it is secret; some cities sing and some
mutter, some are angry, and some have broken hearts, and each city
has her way of greeting Time.
I had said: “I will see Andelsprutz arrogant with her beauty,” and I
had said: “I will see her weeping over her conquest.”
I had said: “She will sing songs to me,” and “she will be reticent,”
“she will be all robed,” and “she will be bare but splendid.”
But the windows of Andelsprutz in her houses looked vacantly over
the plains like the eyes of a dead madman. At the hour her chimes
sounded unlovely and discordant, some of them were out of tune,
and the bells of some were cracked, her roofs were bald and without
moss. At evening no pleasant rumour arose in her streets. When the
lamps were lit in the houses no mystical flood of light stole out into
the dusk, you merely saw that there were lighted lamps; Andelsprutz
had no way with her and no air about her. When the night fell and
the blinds were all drawn down, then I perceived what I had not
thought in the daylight. I knew then that Andelsprutz was dead.
I saw a fair-haired man who drank beer in a cafe, and I said to him:
“Why is the city of Andelsprutz quite dead, and her soul gone
hence?”
He answered: “Cities do not have souls and there is never any life in
bricks.”
And I said to him: “Sir, you have spoken truly.”
And I asked the same question of another man, and he gave me the
same answer, and I thanked him for his courtesy. And I saw a man of
a more slender build, who had black hair, and channels in his cheeks
for tears to run in, and I said to him:
“Why is Andelsprutz quite dead, and when did her soul go hence?”
 THE SOUL OF
ANDELSPRUTZ

And he answered: “Andelsprutz hoped too much. For thirty years

would she stretch out her arms toward the land of Akla every night,
to Mother Akla from whom she had been stolen. Every night she
would be hoping and sighing, and stretching out her arms to Mother
Akla. At midnight, once a year, on the anniversary of the terrible day,
Akla would send spies to lay a wreath against the walls of
Andelsprutz. She could do no more. And on this night, once in every
year, I used to weep, for weeping was the mood of the city that
nursed me. Every night while other cities slept did Andelsprutz sit
brooding here and hoping, till thirty wreaths lay mouldering by her
walls, and still the armies of Akla could not come.
“But after she had hoped so long, and on the night that faithful spies
had brought the thirtieth wreath, Andelsprutz went suddenly mad.
All the bells clanged hideously in the belfries, horses bolted in the
streets, the dogs all howled, the stolid conquerors awoke and turned
in their beds and slept again; and I saw the grey shadowy form of
Andelsprutz rise up, decking her hair with the phantasms of
cathedrals, and stride away from her city. And the great shadowy
form that was the soul of Andelsprutz went away muttering to the
mountains, and there I followed her—for had she not been my nurse?
Yes, I went away alone into the mountains, and for three days,
wrapped in a cloak, I slept in their misty solitudes. I had no food to
eat, and to drink I had only the water of the mountain streams. By
day no living thing was near to me, and I heard nothing but the noise
of the wind, and the mountain streams roaring. But for three nights I
heard all round me on the mountain the sounds of a great city: I saw
the lights of tall cathedral windows flash momently on the peaks, and
at times the glimmering lantern of some fortress patrol. And I saw
the huge misty outline of the soul of Andelsprutz sitting decked with
her ghostly cathedrals, speaking to herself, with her eyes fixed before
her in a mad stare, telling of ancient wars. And her confused speech
for all those nights upon the mountain was sometimes the voice of
traffic, and then of church bells, and then of the bugles, but oftenest
it was the voice of red war; and it was all incoherent, and she was
quite mad.
“The third night it rained heavily all night long, but I stayed up there
to watch the soul of my native city. And she still sat staring straight
before her, raving; but her voice was gentler now, there were more
chimes in it, and occasional song. Midnight passed, and the rain still
swept down on me, and still the solitudes of the mountain were full
of the mutterings of the poor mad city. And the hours after midnight
came, the cold hours wherein sick men die.
“Suddenly I was aware of great shapes moving in the rain, and heard
the sound of voices that were not of my city nor yet of any that I ever
knew. And presently I discerned, though faintly, the souls of a great
concourse of cities, all bending over Andelsprutz and comforting her,
and the ravines of the mountains roared that night with the voices of
cities that had lain still for centuries. For there came the soul of
Camelot that had so long ago forsaken Usk; and there was Ilion, all
girt with towers, still cursing the sweet face of ruinous Helen; I saw
there Babylon and Persepolis, and the bearded face of bull-like
Nineveh, and Athens mourning her immortal gods.
“All these souls of cities that were dead spoke that night on the
mountain to my city and soothed her, until at last she muttered of
war no longer, and her eyes stared wildly no more, but she hid her
face in her hands and for some while wept softly. At last she arose,
and, walking slowly and with bended head, and leaning upon Ilion
and Carthage, went mournfully eastwards; and the dust of her
highways swirled behind her as she went, a ghostly dust that never
turned to mud in all that drenching rain. And so the souls of the
cities led her away, and gradually they disappeared from the
mountain, and the ancient voices died away in the distance.
“Never since then have I seen my city alive; but once I met with a
traveller who said that somewhere in the midst of a great desert are
gathered together the souls of all dead cities. He said that he was lost
once in a place where there was no water, and he heard their voices
speaking all the night.”
But I said: “I was once without water in a desert and heard a city
speaking to me, but knew not whether it really spoke or not, for on
that day I heard so many terrible things, and only some of them were
true.”
And the man with the black hair said: “I believe it to be true, though
whither she went I know not. I only know that a shepherd found me
in the morning faint with hunger and cold, and carried me down
here; and when I came to Andelsprutz it was, as you have perceived
it, dead.”
 Where the Tides Ebb and Flow

dreamt that I had done a horrible thing, so that burial

was to be denied me either in soil or sea, neither could
there be any hell for me.
I waited for some hours, knowing this. Then my friends
came for me, and slew me secretly and with ancient rite,
and lit great tapers, and carried me away.
It was all in London that the thing was done, and they went furtively
at dead of night along grey streets and among mean houses until they
came to the river. And the river and the tide of the sea were grappling
with one another between the mud-banks, and both of them were
black and full of lights. A sudden wonder came into the eyes of each,
as my friends came near to them with their glaring tapers. All these
things I saw as they carried me dead and stiffening, for my soul was
still among my bones, because there was no hell for it, and because
Christian burial was denied me.
They took me down a stairway that was green with slimy things, and
so came slowly to the terrible mud. There, in the territory of forsaken
things, they dug a shallow grave. When they had finished they laid
me in the grave, and suddenly they cast their tapers to the river. And
when the water had quenched the flaring lights the tapers looked
pale and small as they bobbed upon the tide, and at once the glamour
of the calamity was gone, and I noticed then the approach of the
huge dawn; and my friends cast their cloaks over their faces, and the
solemn procession was turned into many fugitives that furtively stole
away.
Then the mud came back wearily and covered all but my face. There I
lay alone with quite forgotten things, with drifting things that the
tides will take no farther, with useless things and lost things, and
with the horrible unnatural bricks that are neither stone nor soil. I
was rid of feeling, because I had been killed, but perception and
thought were in my unhappy soul. The dawn widened, and I saw the
desolate houses that crowded the marge of the river, and their dead
windows peered into my dead eyes, windows with bales behind them
instead of human souls. I grew so weary looking at these forlorn
things that I wanted to cry out, but could not, because I was dead.
Then I knew, as I had never known before, that for all the years that
herd of desolate houses had wanted to cry out too, but, being dead,
were dumb. And I knew then that it had yet been well with the
forgotten drifting things if they had wept, but they were eyeless and
without life. And I, too, tried to weep, but there were no tears in my
dead eyes. And I knew then that the river might have cared for us,
might have caressed us, might have sung to us, but he swept broadly
onwards, thinking of nothing but the princely ships.

THE TERRIBLE MUD

At last the tide did what the river would not, and came and covered
me over, and my soul had rest in the green water, and rejoiced and
believed that it had the Burial of the Sea. But with the ebb the water
fell again, and left me alone again with the callous mud among the
forgotten things that drift no more, and with the sight of all those
desolate houses, and with the knowledge among all of us that each
was dead.
In the mournful wall behind me, hung with green weeds, forsaken of
the sea, dark tunnels appeared, and secret narrow passages that were
clamped and barred. From these at last the stealthy rats came down
to nibble me away, and my soul rejoiced thereat and believed that he
would be free perforce from the accursed bones to which burial was
refused. Very soon the rats ran away a little space and whispered
among themselves. They never came any more. When I found that I
was accursed even among the rats I tried to weep again.
Then the tide came swinging back and covered the dreadful mud,
and hid the desolate houses, and soothed the forgotten things, and
my soul had ease for a while in the sepulture of the sea. And then the
tide forsook me again.
To and fro it came about me for many years. Then the County
Council found me, and gave me decent burial. It was the first grave
that I had ever slept in. That very night my friends came for me. They
dug me up and put me back again in the shallow hole in the mud.
Again and again through the years my bones found burial, but always
behind the funeral lurked one of those terrible men who, as soon as
night fell, came and dug them up and carried them back again to the
hole in the mud.
And then one day the last of those men died who once had done to
me this terrible thing. I heard his soul go over the river at sunset.
And again I hoped.
A few weeks afterwards I was found once more, and once more taken
out of that restless place and given deep burial in sacred ground,
where my soul hoped that it should rest.
Almost at once men came with cloaks and tapers to give me back to
the mud, for the thing had become a tradition and a rite. And all the
forsaken things mocked me in their dumb hearts when they saw me
carried back, for they were jealous of me because I had left the mud.
It must be remembered that I could not weep.
And the years went by seawards where the black barges go, and the
great derelict centuries became lost at sea, and still I lay there
without any cause to hope, and daring not to hope without a cause,
because of the terrible envy and the anger of the things that could
drift no more.
Once a great storm rode up, even as far as London, out of the sea
from the South; and he came curving into the river with the fierce
East wind. And he was mightier than the dreary tides, and went with
great leaps over the listless mud. And all the sad forgotten things
rejoiced, and mingled with things that were haughtier than they, and
rode once more amongst the lordly shipping that was driven up and
down. And out of their hideous home he took my bones, never again,
I hoped, to be vexed with the ebb and flow. And with the fall of the
tide he went riding down the river and turned to the southwards, and
so went to his home. And my bones he scattered among many isles
and along the shores of happy alien mainlands. And for a moment,
while they were far asunder, my soul was almost free.
Then there arose, at the will of the moon, the assiduous flow of the
tide, and it undid at once the work of the ebb, and gathered my bones
from the marge of sunny isles, and gleaned them all along the
mainland’s shores, and went rocking northwards till it came to the
mouth of the Thames, and there turned westwards its relentless face,
and so went up the river and came to the hole in the mud, and into it
dropped my bones; and partly the mud covered them and partly it
left them white, for the mud cares not for its forsaken things.
Then the ebb came, and I saw the dead eyes of the houses and the
jealousy of the other forgotten things that the storm had not carried
thence.
And some more centuries passed over the ebb and flow and over the
loneliness of things forgotten. And I lay there all the while in the
careless grip of the mud, never wholly covered, yet never able to go
free, and I longed for the great caress of the warm Earth or the
comfortable lap of the Sea.
Sometimes men found my bones and buried them, but the tradition
never died, and my friends’ successors always brought them back. At
last the barges went no more, and there were fewer lights; shaped
timbers no longer floated down the fair-way, and there came instead
old wind-uprooted trees in all their natural simplicity.
At last I was aware that somewhere near me a blade of grass was
growing, and the moss began to appear all over the dead houses. One
day some thistledown went drifting over the river.
For some years I watched these signs attentively, until I became
certain that London was passing away. Then I hoped once more, and
all along both banks of the river there was anger among the lost
things that anything should dare to hope upon the forsaken mud.
Gradually the horrible houses crumbled, until the poor dead things
that never had had life got decent burial among the weeds and moss.
At last the may appeared and the convolvulus. Finally, the wild rose
stood up over mounds that had been wharves and warehouses. Then
I knew that the cause of Nature had triumphed, and London had
passed away.
The last man in London came to the wall by the river, in an ancient
cloak that was one of those that once my friends had worn, and
peered over the edge to see that I still was there. Then he went, and I
never saw men again: they had passed away with London.
A few days after the last man had gone the birds came into London,
all the birds that sing. When they first saw me they all looked
sideways at me, then they went away a little and spoke among
themselves.
“He only sinned against Man,” they said; “it is not our quarrel.”
“Let us be kind to him,” they said.
Then they hopped nearer me and began to sing. It was the time of the
rising of the dawn, and from both banks of the river, and from the
sky, and from the thickets that were once the streets, hundreds of
birds were singing. As the light increased the birds sang more and
more; they grew thicker and thicker in the air above my head, till
there were thousands of them singing there, and then millions, and
at last I could see nothing but a host of flickering wings with the
sunlight on them, and little gaps of sky. Then when there was
nothing to be heard in London but the myriad notes of that exultant
song, my soul rose up from the bones in the hole in the mud and
began to climb up the song heavenwards. And it seemed that a
laneway opened amongst the wings of the birds, and it went up and
up, and one of the smaller gates of Paradise stood ajar at the end of
it. And then I knew by a sign that the mud should receive me no
more, for suddenly I found that I could weep.
At this moment I opened my eyes in bed in a house in London, and
outside some sparrows were twittering in a tree in the light of the
radiant morning; and there were tears still wet upon my face, for
one’s restraint is feeble while one sleeps. But I arose and opened the
window wide, and, stretching my hands out over the little garden, I
blessed the birds whose song had woken me up from the troubled
and terrible centuries of my dream.
 Bethmoora

here is a faint freshness in the London night as though

some strayed reveller of a breeze had left his comrades
in the Kentish uplands and had entered the town by
stealth. The pavements are a little damp and shiny.
Upon one’s ears that at this late hour have become very
acute there hits the tap of a remote footfall. Louder and louder grow
the taps, filling the whole night. And a black cloaked figure passes by,
and goes tapping into the dark. One who has danced goes
homewards. Somewhere a ball has closed its doors and ended. Its
yellow lights are out, its musicians are silent, its dancers have all
gone into the night air, and Time has said of it, “Let it be past and
over, and among the things that I have put away.”
Shadows begin to detach themselves from their great gathering
places. No less silently than those shadows that are thin and dead
move homewards the stealthy cats. Thus have we even in London our
faint forebodings of the dawn’s approach, which the birds and the
beasts and the stars are crying aloud to the untrammelled fields.
At what moment I know not I perceive that the night itself is
irrecoverably overthrown. It is suddenly revealed to me by the weary
pallor of the street lamps that the streets are silent and nocturnal
still, not because there is any strength in night, but because men
have not yet arisen from sleep to defy him. So have I seen dejected
and untidy guards still bearing antique muskets in palatial gateways,
although the realms of the monarch that they guard have shrunk to a
single province which no enemy yet has troubled to overrun.
And it is now manifest from the aspect of the street lamps, those
abashed dependants of night, that already English mountain peaks
have seen the dawn, that the cliffs of Dover are standing white to the
morning, that the sea-mist has lifted and is pouring inland.
And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out the streets.
Behold now night is dead.
What memories, what fancies throng one’s mind! A night but just
now gathered out of London by the hostile hand of Time. A million
common artificial things all cloaked for a while in mystery, like
beggars robed in purple, and seated on dread thrones. Four million
people asleep, dreaming perhaps. What worlds have they gone into?
Whom have they met? But my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in
her loneliness, whose gates swing to and fro. To and fro they swing,
and creak and creak in the wind, but no one hears them. They are of
green copper, very lovely, but no one sees them now. The desert wind
pours sand into their hinges, no watchman comes to ease them. No
guard goes round Bethmoora’s battlements, no enemy assails them.
There are no lights in her houses, no footfall in her streets; she
stands there dead and lonely beyond the Hills of Hap, and I would
see Bethmoora once again, but dare not.
It is many a year, as they tell me, since Bethmoora became desolate.
Her desolation is spoken of in taverns where sailors meet, and
certain travellers have told me of it.
I had hoped to see Bethmoora once again. It is many a year ago, they
say, when the vintage was last gathered in from the vineyards that I
knew, where it is all desert now. It was a radiant day, and the people
of the city were dancing by the vineyards, while here and there one
played upon the kalipac. The purple flowering shrubs were all in
bloom, and the snow shone upon the Hills of Hap.
Outside the copper gates they crushed the grapes in vats to make the
syrabub. It had been a goodly vintage.
In little gardens at the desert’s edge men beat the tambang and the
tittibuk, and blew melodiously the zootibar.
All there was mirth and song and dance, because the vintage had
been gathered in, and there would be ample syrabub for the winter
months, and much left over to exchange for turquoises and emeralds
with the merchants who come down from Oxuhahn. Thus they
rejoiced all day over their vintage on the narrow strip of cultivated
ground that lay between Bethmoora and the desert which meets the
sky to the South. And when the heat of the day began to abate, and
the sun drew near to the snows on the Hills of Hap, the note of the
zootibar still rose clear from the gardens, and the brilliant dresses of
the dancers still wound among the flowers. All that day three men on
mules had been noticed crossing the face of the Hills of Hap.
Backwards and forwards they moved as the track wound lower and
lower, three little specks of black against the snow. They were seen
first in the very early morning up near the shoulder of Peol
Jagganoth, and seemed to be coming out of Utnar Véhi. All day they
came. And in the evening, just before lights come out and colours
change, they appeared before Bethmoora’s copper gates. They
carried staves, such as messengers bear in those lands, and seemed
sombrely clad when the dancers all came round them with their
green and lilac dresses. Those Europeans who were present and
heard the message given were ignorant of the language, and only
caught the name of Utnar Véhi. But it was brief, and passed rapidly
from mouth to mouth, and almost at once the people burnt their
vineyards and began to flee away from Bethmoora, going for the
most part northwards, though some went to the East. They ran down
out of their fair white houses, and streamed through the copper gate;
the throbbing of the tambang and the tittibuk suddenly ceased with
the note of the zootibar, and the clinking kalipac stopped a moment
after. The three strange travellers went back the way they came the
instant their message was given. It was the hour when a light would
have appeared in some high tower, and window after window would
have poured into the dusk its lion-frightening light, and the copper
gates would have been fastened up. But no lights came out in
windows there that night and have not ever since, and those copper
gates were left wide and have never shut, and the sound arose of the
red fire crackling in the vineyards, and the pattering of feet fleeing
softly. There were no cries, no other sounds at all, only the rapid and
determined flight. They fled as swiftly and quietly as a herd of wild
cattle flee when they suddenly see a man. It was as though something
had befallen which had been feared for generations, which could only
be escaped by instant flight, which left no time for indecision.
Then fear took the Europeans also, and they too fled. And what the
message was I have never heard.
Many believe that it was a message from Thuba Mleen, the
mysterious emperor of those lands, who is never seen by man,
advising that Bethmoora should be left desolate. Others say that the
message was one of warning from the gods, whether from friendly
gods or from adverse ones they know not.
And others hold that the Plague was ravaging a line of cities over in
Utnar Véhi, following the South-west wind which for many weeks
had been blowing across them towards Bethmoora.
Some say that the terrible gnousar sickness was upon the three
travellers, and that their very mules were dripping with it, and
suppose that they were driven to the city by hunger, but suggest no
better reason for so terrible a crime.
But most believe that it was a message from the desert himself, who
owns all the Earth to the southwards, spoken with his peculiar cry to
those three who knew his voice—men who had been out on the sand-
wastes without tents by night, who had been by day without water,
men who had been out there where the desert mutters, and had
grown to know his needs and his malevolence. They say that the
desert had a need for Bethmoora, that he wished to come into her
lovely streets, and to send into her temples and her houses his storm-
winds draped with sand. For he hates the sound and the sight of men
in his old evil heart, and he would have Bethmoora silent and
undisturbed, save for the weird love he whispers at her gates.
If I knew what that message was that the three men brought on
mules, and told in the copper gate, I think that I should go and see
Bethmoora once again. For a great longing comes on me here in
London to see once more that white and beautiful city; and yet I dare
not, for I know not the danger I should have to face, whether I should
risk the fury of unknown dreadful gods, or some disease unspeakable
and slow, or the desert’s curse, or torture in some little private room
of the Emperor Thuba Mleen, or something that the travellers have
not told—perhaps more fearful still.
 Idle Days on the Yann

o I came down through the wood to the bank of Yann and

found, as had been prophesied, the ship Bird of the
River about to loose her cable.
The captain sate cross-legged upon the white deck with
his scimitar lying beside him in its jewelled scabbard,
and the sailors toiled to spread the nimble sails to bring the ship into
the central stream of Yann, and all the while sang ancient soothing
songs. And the wind of the evening descending cool from the
snowfields of some mountainous abode of distant gods came
suddenly, like glad tidings to an anxious city, into the wing-like sails.
And so we came into the central stream, whereat the sailors lowered
the greater sails. But I had gone to bow before the captain, and to
inquire concerning the miracles, and appearances among men, of the
most holy gods of whatever land he had come from. And the captain
answered that he came from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods
that were the least and humblest, who seldom sent the famine or the
thunder, and were easily appeased with little battles. And I told how
I came from Ireland, which is of Europe, whereat the captain and all
the sailors laughed, for they said, “There are no such places in all the
land of dreams.” When they had ceased to mock me, I explained that
my fancy mostly dwelt in the desert of Cuppar-Nombo, about a
beautiful blue city called Golthoth the Damned, which was
sentinelled all round by wolves and their shadows, and had been
utterly desolate for years and years, because of a curse which the
gods once spoke in anger and could never since recall. And
sometimes my dreams took me as far as Pungar Vees, the red walled
city where the fountains are, which trades with the Isles and Thul.
When I said this they complimented me upon the abode of my fancy,
saying that, though they had never seen these cities, such places
might well be imagined. For the rest of that evening I bargained with
the captain over the sum that I should pay him for my fare if God and
the tide of Yann should bring us safely as far as the cliffs by the sea,
which are named Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann.

BIRD OF THE RIVER

And now the sun had set, and all the colors of the world and heaven
had held a festival with him, and slipped one by one away before the
imminent approach of night. The parrots had all flown home to the
jungle on either bank, the monkeys in rows in safety on high
branches of the trees were silent and asleep, the fireflies in the deeps
of the forest were going up and down, and the great stars came
gleaming out to look on the face of Yann. Then the sailors lighted
lanterns and hung them round the ship, and the light flashed out on
a sudden and dazzled Yann, and the ducks that fed along his marshy
banks all suddenly arose, and made wide circles in the upper air, and
saw the distant reaches of the Yann and the white mist that softly
cloaked the jungle, before they returned again into their marshes.
And then the sailors knelt on the decks and prayed, not all together,
but five or six at a time. Side by side there kneeled down together five
or six, for there only prayed at the same time men of different faiths,
so that no god should hear two men praying to him at once. As soon
as any one had finished his prayer, another of the same faith would
take his place. Thus knelt the row of five or six with bended heads
under the fluttering sail, while the central stream of the River Yann
took them on towards the sea, and their prayers rose up from among
the lanterns and went towards the stars. And behind them in the
after end of the ship the helmsman prayed aloud the helmsman’s
prayer, which is prayed by all who follow his trade upon the River
Yann, of whatever faith they be. And the captain prayed to his little
lesser gods, to the gods that bless Belzoond.
And I too felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous
God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love
were being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol
Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted,
who is now unworshipped and alone; and to him I prayed.
And upon us praying the night came suddenly down, as it comes
upon all men who pray at evening and upon all men who do not; yet
our prayers comforted our own souls when we thought of the Great
Night to come.
And so Yann bore us magnificently onwards, for he was elate with
molten snow that the Poltiades had brought him from the Hills of
Hap, and the Marn and Migris were swollen full with floods; and he
bore us in his might past Kyph and Pir, and we saw the lights of
Goolunza.
Soon we all slept except the helmsman, who kept the ship in the mid-
stream of Yann.
When the sun rose the helmsman ceased to sing, for by song he
cheered himself in the lonely night. When the song ceased we
suddenly all awoke, and another took the helm, and the helmsman
slept.
We knew that soon we should come to Mandaroon. We made a meal,
and Mandaroon appeared. Then the captain commanded, and the
sailors loosed again the greater sails, and the ship turned and left the
stream of Yann and came into a harbour beneath the ruddy walls of
Mandaroon. Then while the sailors went and gathered fruits I came
alone to the gate of Mandaroon. A few huts were outside it, in which
lived the guard. A sentinel with a long white beard was standing in
the gate, armed with a rusty pike. He wore large spectacles, which
were covered with dust. Through the gate I saw the city. A deathly
stillness was over all of it. The ways seemed untrodden, and moss
was thick on doorsteps; in the market-place huddled figures lay
asleep. A scent of incense came wafted through the gateway, of
incense and burned poppies, and there was a hum of the echoes of
distant bells. I said to the sentinel in the tongue of the region of
Yann, “Why are they all asleep in this still city?”
He answered: “None may ask questions in this gate for fear they
wake the people of the city. For when the people of this city wake the
gods will die. And when the gods die men may dream no more.” And
I began to ask him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his
pike because none might ask questions there. So I left him and went
back to the Bird of the River.
Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peering
over her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs.
When I came back again to the Bird of the River, I found the sailors
were returned to the ship. Soon we weighed anchor, and sailed out
again, and so came once more to the middle of the river. And now the
sun was moving toward his heights, and there had reached us on the
River Yann the song of those countless myriads of choirs that attend
him in his progress round the world. For the little creatures that have
many legs had spread their gauze wings easily on the air, as a man
rests his elbows on a balcony and gave jubilant, ceremonial praises to
the sun, or else they moved together on the air in wavering dances
intricate and swift, or turned aside to avoid the onrush of some drop
of water that a breeze had shaken from a jungle orchid, chilling the
air and driving it before it, as it fell whirring in its rush to the earth;
but all the while they sang triumphantly. “For the day is for us,” they
said, “whether our great and sacred father the Sun shall bring up
more life like us from the marshes, or whether all the world shall end
to-night.” And there sang all those whose notes are known to human
ears, as well as those whose far more numerous notes have been
never heard by man.
To these a rainy day had been as an era of war that should desolate
continents during all the lifetime of a man.
And there came out also from the dark and steaming jungle to behold
and rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced,
but danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen of
distant conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in
some encampment of the gipsies, for the mere bread to live by, but
beyond that would never abate her pride to dance for a fragment
more.
And the butterflies sung of strange and painted things, of purple
orchids and of lost pink cities and the monstrous colours of the
jungle’s decay. And they, too, were among those whose voices are not
discernible by human ears. And as they floated above the river, going
from forest to forest, their splendour was matched by the inimical
beauty of the birds who darted out to pursue them. Or sometimes
they settled on the white and wax-like blooms of the plant that
creeps and clambers about the trees of the forest; and their purple
wings flashed out on the great blossoms as, when the caravans go
from Nurl to Thace, the gleaming silks flash out upon the snow,
where the crafty merchants spread them one by one to astonish the
mountaineers of the Hills of Noor.
But upon men and beasts the sun sent a drowsiness. The river
monsters along the river’s marge lay dormant in the slime. The
sailors pitched a pavilion, with golden tassels, for the captain upon
the deck, and then went, all but the helmsman, under a sail that they
had hung as an awning between two masts. Then they told tales to
one another, each of his own city or of the miracles of his god, until
all were fallen asleep. The captain offered me the shade of his
pavilion with the gold tassels, and there we talked for awhile, he
telling me that he was taking merchandise to Perdóndaris, and that
he would take back to fair Belzoond things appertaining to the affairs
of the sea. Then, as I watched through the pavilion’s opening the
brilliant birds and butterflies that crossed and recrossed over the
river, I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was a monarch entering his
capital underneath arches of flags, and all the musicians of the world
were there, playing melodiously their instruments; but no one
cheered.
In the afternoon, as the day grew cooler again, I awoke and found the
captain buckling on his scimitar, which he had taken off him while he