Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one of fifty one Tales by Lord Duncanne. This
is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information ough to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Thomas Copeland. Fifty one Tales
by Lord Dunzanne, Part One. The Assignation fame, singing in

(00:25):
the highways and trifling as she sang with sordid adventurers,
passed the poet by, and still the poet made for
her little chaplets of song to deck her forehead.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
In the courts of time.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
And still she wore instead the worthless garlands that boisterous
citizens flung to her in the ways, made out of
perishable things. And after a while, whenever these garlands died,
the poet came to her with his chaplets of song,
And still she laughed at him and wore the worthless wreaths,
though they always died evening. And one day, in his bitterness,

(01:03):
the poet rebuked her and said, to her, lovely fame,
even in the highways and the byways, you have not
forborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men,
And I have toiled for you, and dreamed of you,
and you mock me and pass me by, and fame
turned her back on him and walked away. But in

(01:24):
departing she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him
as she had not smiled before, and almost speaking in
a whisper, said, I will meet you in the graveyard
at the back of the workhouse in a hundred years.
Karen Karen leaned forward and rode. All things were won

(01:49):
with his weariness. It was not with him a matter
of years or of centuries, but of wide floods of time,
and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms
that had become for him part of the scheme that
the gods had made, and was of peace with eternity.
If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind,

(02:10):
it would have divided all time in his memory into
two equal slabs. So gray were all things always where
he was, that if any radiance lingered a moment among
the dead on the face of such a queen, perhaps
as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it. It

(02:31):
was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers.
They were coming in thousands, where they used to come
in fifties. It was neither Karen's duty nor his wont
to ponder in his gray soul why these.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Things might be.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Karen leaned forward and rowed. Then no one came for
a while. It was not usual for the gods to
send no one down from Earth for such a space,
but the gods knew best. Then one man came alone,
and the little shade sat shivering on a lonely bench.

(03:06):
When the great boat pushed off only one passenger, the
gods knew best, and great and weary Karen rode on
and on beside the little silent, shivering ghost, and the
sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that
grief in the beginning had sighed among his sisters, and

(03:27):
that would not die like the echoes of human sorrow
failing on earthly hills. But it was as old as time,
and the.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Pain in Karen's arms.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Then the boat from the slow gray river loomed up
to the coast of dis and the little silent shade,
still shivering, stepped ashore, and Karen turned the boat to
go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke,
that had been a man, I am the last. He said,

(04:00):
no one had ever made Karen smile before. No one
before had ever made him weep the death of Pan.
When the travelers from London entered Arcity, they lamented one
to another the death of Pan and Anon. They saw him, lying,
stiff and still hornered. Pan was still, and the dew

(04:24):
was on his fur. He had not the look of
a live animal. And then they said, it is true
that Pan is dead, and standing melancholy by that huge,
prone body.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
They looked for long at memorable Pan.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
And evening came, and a small star appeared, and presently
from a hamlet of some Marcadian valley, with a sound
of idle song, Arcadian maidens came, And when they saw there,
suddenly in the twilight, that old recumbent god, they stopped
in their running and whispered among themselves. How silly he looks,

(05:02):
they said, And thereat they laughed a little. And at
the sound of their laughter, Pan leaped up, and the
gravel flew from his hooves. And for as long as
the travelers stood and listened, the crags and the hilltops
of Arkady rang with the sounds of pursuit. The sphinx
at gezer I saw the other day the Sphinx's painted face.

(05:28):
She had painted her face in order to ogle time,
and he has spared no other painted face in all
the world but hers. Delilah was younger than she, and
Delilahs does Time hath loved nothing but this worthless painted face.

(05:49):
I do not care that she is ugly, or that
she has painted her face so that she only lure
his secret.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
From time.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Time dallies like a fool at her face when he
should be smiting cities. Time never wearies of her silly smile.
There are temples all about her that he has forgotten
to spoil. I saw an old man go by, and
time never touched him. Time that has carried away the
seven gates of Thebes. She has tried to bind him

(06:21):
with ropes of eternal stand. She had hoped to oppress
him with the pyramids. He lies there in the sand,
with his foolish hair all spread about her paws. If
she ever finds his secret, we will put out his
eyes so that he shall find no more our beautiful things.
There are lovely gates in Florence that I fear he

(06:42):
will carry away.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
We have tried to bind him.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
With song and with old customs, but they only held
him for a little while, and he has always fitten
us and mocked us. When he is blind, he shall
dance to us and make sport great clumsy time shall
stumble and dance, who like to kill little children, and
can hurt even the daisies. No longer then shall our

(07:08):
children laugh at him who slew Babylon's winged bulls and
smote great numbers of the gods and fairies. When he
is shorn of his hours and his years, we will
shut him up in the pyramid of cheops in the
Great chamber where the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead
him out. When we give our feasts.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
He shall ripen.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Our corn for us and do menial work. We will
kiss thy painted face, O Sphinx, if thou wilt betray
to us time. And yet I fear that in his
ultimate anguish, he may take hold blindly of the world
and the moon, and slowly pull down upon him the
house of man, the hen all along the farm yard gables.

(07:56):
The swallow sat a road, twittering uneasily to one another,
telling of many things, but thinking only of summer. In
the south, for autumn was afoot, and the north wind
waiting and suddenly one day they were all quite gone,
and everyone spoke of the swallows in the south. I
think I shall go south myself next year, said a hen.

(08:19):
And the year wore on, and the swallows came again,
and the year wore on, and they sat again on
the gables, and all the poultry discussed the departure.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Of the hen.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
And very early one morning, the wind being from the north,
the swallows all soared suddenly and felt the wind and
their wings, and a strength came upon them, and a
strange old knowledge and a more than human faith. And
flying high, they left the smoke of our cities in
small remembered eaves, and saw at last the huge and

(08:50):
homeless sea, and, steering by gray sea, currants went southward
with the wind, And going south they went by glittering
fog banks, and saw old islands lifting their heads above them.
They saw the slow quests of the wandering ships and divers,
seeking pearls and lands at war, till there came in

(09:12):
view the mountains that they sought, and the sight of
the peaks they knew. And they descended into an astral
valley and saw summer, sometimes sleeping and sometimes singing song.
I think the wind is about right, said the hen,
And she spread her wings and ran out of the
poultry yard. And she ran fluttering out onto the road

(09:34):
and some way down until she came to a garden.
That evening she came back panting, and in the poultry
yard she told the poultry how she had gone south
as far as the high road, and saw the great
world's traffic going by, and came to lands where the
potato grew, and saw the stubble upon which men live.

(09:55):
And at the end of the road had found a garden,
and there were rows is in it beautiful roses, and
the gardener himself was there with his braces on. How
extremely interesting, the poultry said, and what a really beautiful description.
And the winter wore away, and the bitter months went by,

(10:17):
and the spring of the year appeared, and the swallows
came again. We have been to the south, they said,
and the valleys beyond the sea. But the poultry would
not agree that there was a sea in the south.
You should hear our hen, they said, wind and fog.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Way for us, said the north wind, as he came
down the sea on an errand of old winter, and
he saw before him the gray silent fog that lay
along the tides. Way for us, said the north wind,
O ineffectual fog. For I am Winter's leader in his
age old war with the ships. I overwhelmed them suddenly

(11:02):
in my strength, or drive upon them the huge seafaring birds.
I cross an ocean while.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
You move a mile.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
There is morning in inland places. When I have met
the ships, I drive them upon the rocks and feed
the sea. Wherever I appear. They bow to our lord,
the Winter, and to his arrogant boasting. Nothing said the fog.
Only he rose up slowly and trailed away from the sea, and,

(11:33):
crawling up long valleys, took refuge among the hills. And
night came down, and everything was still, and the fog
began to mumble in the stillness, and I heard him
telling infamously to himself the tale of his horrible spoils.
A hundred and fifteen gallons of old Spain, a certain

(11:59):
argacy that went from tire eight fisher fleets and ninety
ships of the line, twelve war ships under sail with
the carnades, three hundred and eighty seven river craft, forty
two merchantmen that carried spice, four quinquareems, ten tee reams,

(12:22):
thirty yachts, twenty one battleships of the modern time, nine
thousand admirals. He mumbled and chuckled on till I suddenly
rose and fled from his fearful contamination. The raft builders,

(12:43):
all we who write, put me in mind of sailors
hastily making rafts upon doomed ships. When we break up
under the heavy years and go down into eternity with
all that is ours, our thoughts, like small lost rafts,
float on while upon oblivion sea. They will not carry

(13:03):
much over those tides, our names and a phrase of
two little else. They that write as a trade to
please the whim of the day, They are like sailors
that work at their rafts only to warm their hands
and to distract their thoughts from their certain doom. Their
rafts go all to pieces before the ship breaks up.

(13:27):
See now oblivion shimmering all around us, its very tranquility,
deadlier than tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it.
Time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whil and
like a whale, feeds on the littlest things, small tunes

(13:49):
and little unskilled songs of the old and golden evenings,
and Anon turneth whail like to overthrow whole ships. See
now the wreckage of Babylon, floating idly, and something there
that once was Nineveh. Already their kings and queens are
in the deeps, among the weedy masses of old centuries,

(14:11):
that hide the sudden hulk of sunken tire, and make
a darkness round Persepolis. For the rest, I dimly see
the forms of foundered ships on a sea floor strewn
with crowns. Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.
There goes the raft that Homer made for Helen.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
The workmen.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
I saw a workman fall with his scaffolding right from
the summit of some vast hotel, And as he came down,
I saw him holding a knife and trying to cut
his name on the scaffolding. He had time to try
and do this, for he must have had near three
hundred feet to fall. And I could think of nothing

(15:03):
but his folly in doing this futile thing, For not
only would the man be unrecognizably dead in three seconds,
but the very pole on which he tried to scratch
whatever of his name he had time, for was certain
to be burnt in the few weeks for firewood. Then
I went home, for I had work to do, and

(15:24):
all that evening I thought of the man's folly, till
the thought hindered me from serious work. And late that night,
while I was still at work, the ghost of the
workmen floated through my wall and stood before me laughing.
I heard no sound until after I spoke to it,
but I could see the gray diaphanous form standing before me,

(15:47):
shuddering with laughter. I spoke at last and asked what
it was laughing at. And then the ghost spoke and said,
I'm a laughin at you sittin and workin there. And why,
I said, do you laugh at serious work? Why your
bloomin life will go by like a wind, he said,

(16:08):
And your old, silly civilization will be tidied up in
a few centuries. Then he fell to laughing again, and
this time audibly, and laughing still faded back through the
wall again and into the eternity from which he had come.

(16:30):
The guest, a young man, came into an ornate restaurant
at eight o'clock in London. He was alone, but two
places had been laid at the table, which was reserved
for him. He had chosen the dinner very carefully by
letter a week before. A waiter asked him about the
other guest. You probably won't see him till the coffee comes,

(16:52):
the young man told him. So he was served alone.
Those at adjacent tables might have noticed the young man
continually dressing the empty chair and carrying on a monolog
with it throughout his elaborate dinner. I think you knew
my father, he said to it over the soup I
send for you this evening, it continued, because I want

(17:12):
you to do me a good turn. In fact, I
must insist on it. There was nothing eccentric about the
man except for this habit of addressing an empty chair.
Certainly he was eating as good a dinner as any
sane man could wish for. After the burgundy had been served,
he became more voluble in his monologue.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Not that he.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Spoiled his wine by drinking excessively. We have several acquaintances
in common, he said. I met King SETI a year
ago in Thebes. I should think he has altered very
little since you knew him. I thought his forehead a
little low for a king's chops. Has left the house
that he built for your reception. He must have prepared

(17:51):
for you for years and years. I suppose you have
seldom been entertained like that. I ordered that its dinner
over a week d I thought then that a lady might.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Have come with me, But as she wouldn't, I've asked you.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
She may not, after all be as lovely as Helen
of Troy. But was Helen very lovely? Not when you
knew or perhaps you were lucky in Cleopatra. You must
have known her when she was in her prime. You
never knew the mermaids, nor the fairies, nor the lovely
goddesses of long ago. That's where we have the best

(18:28):
of you. He was silent when the waiters came to
his table, but rambled merrily on. As soon as they left,
still turned to the empty chair. You know, I saw
you here in London only the other day. You were
on a motor bus going down Ludgott Hill. It was
going much too fast. London is a good place, but

(18:49):
I shall be glad enough to leave it. It was
in London I met the lady that I was speaking about.
If it hadn't been for London, I probably shouldn't have
met her, And if it hadn't been for London, she
probably wouldn't have had so much besides me to amuse her.
It cuts both ways. He paused once to order coffee,

(19:09):
gazing earnestly at the waiter and putting a sovereign into
his hand. Don't let it be chickery, said he. The
waiter brought the coffee, and the young man dropped a
tabloid of some sort into his cup. I don't suppose
you come here very often, he went on, Well, you
probably want to be going. I haven't taken you much

(19:30):
out of your way. There is plenty for you to
do in London. Then, having drunk his coffee, he fell
on to the floor by a foot of the empty chair,
and a doctor who was dining in the room bent
over him and announced to the anxious manager the visible
presence of the young man's guest. Death and Odysseuse. In

(19:52):
the Olympian courts, Love laughed at Death because he was unsightly,
and because she couldn't help it, and because he never
did anything worth doing, and because she would. And Death
hated being laughed at, and used to brood apart, thinking
only of his wrongs, and of what he could do
to end this intolerable treatment. But one day Death appeared

(20:15):
in the courts with an air, and they all noticed it.
What are you up to now, said Love, and Death,
with some solemnity, said to her, I am going to
frighten Odysseus, and, drawing about him his gray traveler's cloak,
went out through the windy door, with his jowl turned earthwards,

(20:38):
and he came soon to Ithaca and the hall that
Athenian knew, and opened the door and saw their famous
Odysseus with his white locks, bending close over the fire,
trying to warm his hands. And the wind through the
open door blew bitterly on Odysseus, and Death came up
behind him and suddenly shouted, and Yssius went on warming

(21:01):
his pale hands. Then Death came close and began to
mow at inn And after a while Odysseus turned and spoke,
and well, old servant, he said, have your masters been
kind to you since I made you work for me?
Round Ilian and Death for some while stood mute, for

(21:23):
he thought of the laughter of Love. Then come now,
said Odysseus, lend me your shoulder, and he, leaning on
that bony joint. They went together through the open door.
Death and the Orange. Two dark young men in a

(21:44):
foreign southern land sat at a restaurant table with one woman,
And on the woman's plate was a small orange which
had an evil laughter in its heart. And both of
the men would be looking at the woman all the time,
and they ate little, and they drank much, and the
woman was smiling equally at each Then the small orange

(22:08):
that had the laughter in its heart rolled slowly off
the plate on to the floor, and the dark young
men both sought for it at once, and they met
suddenly beneath the table, and soon they were speaking swift
words to one another, and a horror and an impotence
came over the reason of each as she sat helpless

(22:28):
at the back of the mind. And the heart of
the orange laughed, and the woman went on smiling. And Death,
who was sitting at another table tete a tete with
an old man, rose and came over to listen to
the quarrel, the prayer of the flowers. It was the

(22:52):
voice of the flowers on the west wind, the lovable
the old the lazy west wind, blowing ceaselessly, blowing sleepily,
going greecefuls. The woods have gone away, they have fallen
and left us. Men love us no longer. We are lonely.
By moonlight. Great engines rush over the beautiful fields. Their

(23:18):
ways lie hard and terrible up and down the land.
The cantras cities spread over the grass. They clatter in
their lairs. Continually they glitter about us, blemishing the night.
The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods,
and thou art far, o Pan, and far away. I

(23:41):
was standing by night between two railway embankments on the
edge of a Midland city. On one of them, I
saw the trains go by once in every two minutes,
and on the other the trains went by twice in
every five quite close with the glaring factories, and the
sky above them wore the fearful look that it wears

(24:03):
in dreams of fever. The flowers were right in the
stride of that advancing city, and thence I heard them
sending up their cry. And then I heard, beating musically upwind,
the voice of Pan, reproving them from arcady. Be patient
a little. These things are not for long time. And

(24:28):
the tradesman once time, as he prowled the world, his
hair gray, not with weakness, but with dust of the
ruin of cities. Came to a furniture shop and entered
the antique department, And there he saw a man darkening
the wood of a chair with dye, and beating it
with chains, and making imitation wormholes in it. And when

(24:51):
time saw another doing his work, he stood by him
awhile and looked on critically, And at last he said,
let not how I work. And he turned the man's
hair white, and bent his back and put some furrows
in his little cunning face. Then turned and strode away

(25:12):
for a mighty city that was weary and sick, and
too long had troubled the fields with sore in need
of him. The little city. I was in the predestined
eleven eight, from Goraghwood to Drogheda when I suddenly saw

(25:33):
the city. It was a little city in a valley,
and only seemed to have a little smoke. And the
sun caught the smoke and turned it golden, so that
it looked like an old Italian picture, where angels walk
in the foreground and the rest is a blaze of gold,
and beyond as one could tell by the live of land,

(25:53):
although one could not see through the golden smoke, I
knew that there lay the paths of the roving ships
all round. There lay a patchwork of small fields all
over the slopes of the hills, and the snow had
come upon them tentatively, But already the birds of the
waste had moved to the sheltered places, for every omen

(26:16):
boded more to fall. Far away, some little hills blazed
like an aureate bulwark, broken off by age, and fallen
from the earthward rampart of paradise and aloof and dark.
The mountains stared unconcernedly seawards. And when I saw those
gray and watchful mountains sitting where they sat, while the

(26:40):
cities of the civilizations of Araby and Asia arose like crookuses,
and like crocuses fell, I wondered for how long they
would be smoke in the valley and little fields on
the hills, the unpasturable fields thus bake the mountains behold us,

(27:03):
even us, the old ones, the gray ones that wear
the feet of time. Time on our rocks shall break
his staff and stumble, and still we shall sit majestic,
even as now, hearing the sound of the sea, our
old coeval sister who nurses the bones of her children
and weeps for the things she has done. Far far,

(27:27):
we stand above all things, befriending the little cities until
they grow old and leave us to go among the myths.
We are the most imperishable mountains, and softly the clouds
foregathered from far places, and crag on crag, and mountain
upon mountain, in the likeness of Caucasus. Upon him Alaya came,

(27:50):
riding past the sunlight upon the backs of storms, and
look down idly from their golden heights upon the crests
of the mountains. Ye pass away, said the mountains, and
the clouds answered, as I dreamed or fancied, we pass away.
Indeed we pass away. But upon our unpasturable fields. Pegasus

(28:14):
prances here. Pegasus gallops and browses upon song which the
larks bring to him every morning from far terrestrial fields.
His hoof beats ring upon our slopes at sunrise, as
though our fields were of silver, and breathing the dawn
wind and dilated nostrils, with head tossed upwards and with

(28:37):
quivering wings, he stands and stares from our tremendous heights,
and snorts and sees far future, wonderful wars, rage, and
the creases of the folds of the togas that cover.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
The knees of the gods.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
The worm and the angel. As he crawled from the
tombs of the fallen, a worm met with an angel,
and together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and
youths and maidens, and the cities of men. They saw
the old men heavy in their chairs, and heard the
children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors,

(29:19):
and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings,
and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.
And the worms spake to the angel, saying, behold my
food be dacaeon Parathena poluflos Boiotalases.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
Murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, and
can you destroy that too? And the worm paled in
his anger to a grayness ill to behold. For for
three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line,
and still its melody was ringing in his head. The

(30:03):
songless country. The poet came unto a great country in
which there were no songs, and he lamented gently for
the nation that had not any little foolish songs to
sing to itself at evening. And at last he said,
I will make for them myself some little foolish songs,

(30:27):
so that they may be merry in the lanes and
happy by the fireside. And for some days he made
for them aimless songs, such as maidens sing on the
hills in the older, happier countries. Then he went to
some of that nation, as they sat weary with the
work of the day, and said to them, I have
made you some aimless songs out of the small and

(30:50):
reasonable legends, that are somewhat akin to the wind in
the veils of my childhood, And you may care to
sing them in your disconsolate evenings. They said to him,
if you think we have time for that kind of
nonsense nowadays, you cannot know much of the progress of
modern commerce. And then the poet wept, for he said,

(31:15):
alas they are damned.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
The latest thing I saw an unclean feeder by the
banks of the river of time. He crouched by orchards
numerous with apples, in a happy land of flowers. Colossal
barns stood near which the ancients had stored with grain
and the sun was golden on serene far hills behind

(31:43):
the level lands. But his back was to all these things.
He crouched and washed the river, and whatever the river
chanced to send him down, the unclean feeder clutched at
greedily with his arms, wading out into the water. Now
there were in those days, and indeed still are, certain

(32:05):
uncleanly cities upon the river of time. And from them
fearfully nameless things came floating shapelessly by. And whenever the
odor of these came down the river before them, the
unclean feeder plunged into the dirty water and stood far
out expectant. And if he opened his mouth, one saw

(32:27):
these things on his lips. Indeed, from the upper reaches
there came down sometimes the fallen rhododendron's petal sometimes arose,
but they were useless to the unclean feeder, and when
he saw them he growled. The poet walked beside the
river's bank. His head was lifted, and his look was afar.

(32:51):
I think he saw the sea and the hills of
fate from which the river ran. I saw the unclean
feeder standing voracious up to his waste in that evil
smelling river. Look, I said to the poet, the current
will sweep him away. The poet said, but those cities
that poison the river, I said to him. He answered,

(33:13):
whenever the centuries melt on the hills of Fate, the
river terribly floods. The Demagogue and the Demi Monde, a
demagogue and a Demi mondn, chanced to arrive together at
that gate of Paradise, and the Saint looked sorrowfully at
them both. Why were you a demagogue? He said to

(33:36):
the first, because, said the demagogue, I stood for those
principles that have made us what we are, and have
endeared our party to the great heart of the people.
In a word, I stood unflinchingly on the plank of
popular representation. And you, said the Saint to her of
the Demi monde, I wanted money, said the Demi Monden,

(34:00):
And after some moments thought, the Saint said, well, come in,
though you don't deserve to. But to the demagogue, he said,
we genuinely regret that the limited space at our disposal,
and our unfortunate lack of interest in those questions that
you have gone so far to inculcate, and have so
ably upheld in the past, prevent us from giving you

(34:22):
the support for which you seek. And he shut the
golden door. The giant poppy. I dreamt that I went
back to the hills I knew whence on a clear
day you can see the walls of Ilian and the
plains of Ronseolvan. There used to be woods along the

(34:43):
tops of those hills, with clearings in them, where the
moonlight fell, and there, when no one watched, the fairies danced.
But there were no woods when I went back, no fairies,
nor distant glimpse of Ilian or plains of roancoval On
when they one giant poppy waved in the wind, and

(35:04):
as it waved it hummed, remember not, And by the
oak like stem a poet sat, dressed like a shepherd
and playing an ancient tune softly upon a pipe. I
asked him if the fairies had passed that way, or
anything olden. He said, the poppy has grown apace and
is killing gods and fairies. Its fumes are suffocating the world,

(35:28):
and its roots drain it of its beautiful strength. And
I asked him why he sat on the hills I knew,
playing an olden tune, and he answered, because the tune
is bad for the poppy, which would otherwise grow more swiftly.
And because if the brotherhood of which I am one

(35:50):
were to cease to pipe on the hills, men would
stray over the world and be lost or come to
terrible ends. We think we have saved agam Emnon. Then
he fell to piping again that olden tune, while the
wind among the poppies, sleepy petals murmured, remember not, remember not, roses.

(36:16):
I know a roadside where the wild rose blooms with
a strange abundance. There is a beauty in the blossoms, too,
of an almost exotic kind, a taint of deeper pink
that shocks the Puritan flowers two hundred generations ago, A
generations I mean of roses. This was a village street.

(36:38):
There was a floral decadence when they left their simple life,
and the roses came from the wilderness to clamber round
the houses of men. Of all the memories of that
little village, of all the cottages that stood there, of
all the men and women whose home, as they were,
nothing remains but a more beautiful blush on the faces

(37:00):
of the roses. I hope that when London is clean
passed away, and the defeated fields come back again, like
an exiled people returning after a war, they may find
some beautiful thing to remind them of it all, because
we have loved a little that swart old city, the

(37:23):
man with the golden ear rings. It may be that
I dreamed this so much. At least is certain that
I turned one day from the traffic of a city
and came to its docks, and saw its slimy wharves
going down green and steep into the water, and saw
the huge gray river slipping by, and the lost things

(37:45):
that went with it, turning over and over. And I
thought of the nation's and unpitying time, and saw and
marveled at the queenly ships come newly from the sea.
It was, then, if I mistake not, that I saw
a leaning against a wall with his face to the ships,
a man with golden ear rings. His skin had the

(38:07):
dark tint of the southern men. The deep black hairs
of his mustache were whitened a little with salt. He
wore a dark blue jacket, such as sailors wear, and
the long boots of seafarers. But the look in his
eyes was further afield than the ships. He seemed to
be beholding the farthest things. Even when I spoke to him,

(38:30):
he did not call home that look, but answered me
dreamily with that same fixed stare as, though his thoughts
were heaving on far and lonely seas. I asked him
what ship he had come by, for there were many there.
The sailing ships were there, with their sails all furled
and their masts straight and still like a wintry forest.

(38:54):
The steamers were there, and great liners, puffing up idle
smoke into the twine night. He answered he had come
by none of them. I asked him what line he
worked on, for he was clearly a sailor. I mentioned
well known lines, but he did not know them. Then
I asked him where he worked and what he was,

(39:17):
and he said, I work in the Sargasso Sea, and
I am the last of the pirates, the last left alive.
And I shook him by the hand. I do not
know how many times I said, we feared you were dead,
We feared you were dead, and he answered sadly, no, no,

(39:39):
I have sinned too deeply on the Spanish seas. I
am not allowed to die. The dream of King Karnavutra.
King Karnavutra, sitting on his throne, commanding all things, said,
I very clearly saw last night the queenly vava Aniria.

(40:01):
Though partly she was hidden by great clouds that swept
continually by her, rolling over and over. Yet her face
was unhidden and shone, being full of moonlight. I said
to her, walk with me by the great pools, in
many gardened beautiful Istrakhan, where the lilies float that give

(40:22):
delectable dreams, or drawing aside the curtain of hanging orchids,
Pass with me. Thence from the pools by a secret
path through the els impassable jungle that feels the only
way between the mountains that shut in Istrakhan. They shut
it in and look on it with joy at morning

(40:43):
and at evening, when the pools are strange, with light
still in their gladness. Sometimes there melts the deadly snow
that kills upon lonely heights the mountaineer. They are valleys,
among them older than the wrinkles in the moon. Come
with me, thence, or linger there with me, and either

(41:05):
we shall come to romantic lands which the men of
the caravans only speak of in song or else we
shall listlessly walk in a land so lovely that even
the butterflies that float about it when they see their images, flash,
and the sacred pools are terrified by their beauty. And
each night we shall hear the myriad nightingales, all in

(41:28):
one chorus, sing the stars to death. Do this, and
I will send heralds far from here with tidings of
thy beauty. And they shall run and come to Sendara,
and men shall know it there who herd brown sheep.
And from Sender the rumor shall spread on down either

(41:48):
bank of the holy River of Zoth, till the people
that make wattles in the plains shall hear.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Of it and sing.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
But the heralds shall go northward along the hills until
they come to Suma, And in that golden city they
shall tell the kings that sit in their lofty alabaster
house of thy strange and sudden smiles. And often in
distant markets shall thy story be told by merchants out
from Suma, as they sit, telling careless tales to lure

(42:19):
men to their wares. And the heralds, passing thence shall
come even to Ingra, to Ingra, where they dance, and
there they shall tell of THEE, so that thy name
long hence shall be sung in that joyous city. And
there they shall borrow camels, and pass over the sands,

(42:40):
and go by desert ways to distant near it, to
tell of THEE to the lonely men in the mountain monasteries.
Come with me even now, for it is spring. And
as I said this, she faintly yet perceptibly shook her head.
And it was only then I remembered my youth was gone,

(43:03):
and she dead. Forty years the storm, they saw a
little ship that was far at sea, and that went
by the name of the Petitiesperance. And because of its
uncouth rig and its lonely air, and the look that

(43:26):
it had of coming from strangers lands, they said, it
is neither a ship to greet, nor desire, nor yet
to succor when in the hands of the sea, and
the sea rose up as is the wont of the sea,
and the little ship from Afar was in its hands,
and frailer than ever seemed, its feeble masts with their

(43:46):
sails of fantastic cut and their alien flags, and the
sea made a great and very triumphing voice as the
sea does. And then there arose a wave that was
very strong, even the ninth born son of the hurricane,
and the tide and hid the little ship, and hid
the whole of the far parts of the sea. Thereat

(44:09):
said those who stood on the good dry land to us,
but a little worthless alien ship, and it is sunk
at sea. And it is good and right that the
storm have spoil. And they turned and watched the course
of the merchantmen, laden with silver and appeasing spice. Year
after year they cheered them into port, and praised their

(44:32):
goods and their familiar sails. And many years went by,
and at last, with decks and bulwarks covered with cloth
of gold, with age old parrots that had known the troubadours,
singing illustrious songs, and preening their feathers of gold, with
a hold full of emeralds and rubies, all silken with

(44:54):
Indian lute furling. As it came in its way, worn
alien sails, a galleon glided into port, shutting the sunlight
from the merchantmen, and lo it loomed the equal of
the cliffs. Who are you, they asked, Far traveled wonderful ship,

(45:16):
and they said the petit esperance. Oh, said the people
on shore, We thought you were sunk at sea. Sunk
at sea, sang the sailors. We could not be sunk
at sea. We had the gods on board. A mistaken identity. Fame,

(45:39):
as she walked at evening in a city, saw the
painted face of Notoriety flaunting beneath the gas lamp, and
many kneeled unto her in the dirt of the road.
Who are you, Fame said to her, I am Fame,
said Notoriety. Then Fame stole softly away, so that no
one knew she had gone. And Notoriety presently went forth,

(46:03):
and all her worshipers rose and followed after, and she
led them as was most meat, to her native pit.
End of Part one, Part two of fifty one Tales

(46:28):
by Lord Duncannie. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain recording by Thomas Copeland, The True History of the
Hare and the Tortoise. For a long time there was doubt,
with acrimony among the beasts as to whether the hare
or the tortoise could run the swifter. Some said the

(46:50):
hare was the swifter of the two, because he had
such long ears and others said that the tortoise was
the swifter, because any one whose shell was so hard
as that should be able to run hard. Two and lo,
the forces of estrangement and disorder perpetually postponed a decisive contest.
But when there was nearly war among the beasts, at

(47:12):
last an arrangement was come to, and it was decided
that the hare and the tortoise should run a race
of five hundred yards, so that all should see who
was right. Ridiculous nonsense, said the hare, and it was
all his backers could do to get him to run.
The contest is most welcome to me, said the tortoise.
I shall not shirk it. Oh, how his backers cheered.

(47:35):
Feeling ran high. On the day of the race, the
goose rushed at the fox and nearly pecked him. Both
sides spoke loudly of the approaching victory up to the
very moment of the race. I am absolutely confident of success,
said the tortoise, But the hare said nothing. He looked
bored and cross. Some of his suborders deserted him then

(47:55):
and went to the other side, who were loudly cheering
The tortoises in spiriting words but many remained with the hair.
We shall not be disappointed in him, they said. A
beast with such long ears is bound to win. Run hard,
said the supporters of the tortoise, and run hard became
a kind of catchphrase which everybody repeated to one another.

(48:18):
Hard shell and hard living. That's what the country wants.
Run hard, they said, And these words were never uttered,
but multitudes cheered from their hearts. Then they were off,
and suddenly there was a hush. The hare dashed off
for about a hundred yards. Then he looked round to
see where his rival was. It is rather absurd, he said,

(48:40):
to race at the tortoise. And he sat down and
scratched himself. Run hard, run hard, shouted some Let him rest,
shouted others, and let him rest became a catchphrase too,
And after a while his rival drew near to him.
There comes that damned tortoise, said the hare, and he
got up and ran as hard as he could, so

(49:02):
that he should not let the tortoise beat him. Those
ears will win, said his friends. Those ears will win,
and establish upon an incontestable footing the truth of what
we have said. And some of them turned to the
backers of the tortoise and said, what about your beast.
Now run hard, they replied, run hard. The hair ran

(49:23):
on for nearly three hundred yards, nearly, in fact, as
far as the winning post, when it suddenly struck him,
What a fool He looked, running graces with a tortoise
who was nowhere in sight. And he sat down again
and scratched. Run hard, run hard, said the crowd, And
let him rest. Whatever is the use of it, said

(49:44):
the hare, And this time he stopped for good. Some
say he slept. There was desperate excitement for an hour
or two, and then the tortoise won. Run hard, run hard,
shouted his backers, hard shall and hard living. That that's
what has done it. And then they asked the tortoise
what his achievement signified, and he went and asked the turtle,

(50:07):
and the turtle said, it is a glorious victory for
the forces of swiftness. And then the tortoise repeated it
to his friends, and all the beasts said nothing else
for years and even to this day. A glorious victory
for the forces of swiftness is a catch phrase in
the house of the snail, and the reason that this

(50:29):
version of the race is not widely known, is that
very few of those that witnessed it survived the great
forest fire that happened shortly after it came up over
the wheeld by night with a great wind. The hare
and the tortoise and a very few of the beasts
saw it far off from a high, bare hill that
was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly

(50:51):
called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send
to warn the beasts in the forest. They sent the
tortoise alone. The immortals I heard it said that far
away from here, on the wrong side of the deserts
of Cathay, and in a country dedicate to winter, are

(51:14):
all the years that are dead. And there a certain
valley shusts them in and hides them, as rumor has it,
from the world, but not from the sight of the moon,
nor from those that dream in his rays. And I said,
I will go from here by ways of dream, and
I will come to that valley and enter it and

(51:36):
mourn there for the good years that are dead. And
I said, I will take a wreath, a wreath of mourning,
and lay it at their feet in token of my
sorrow for their dooms. And when I sought about among
the flowers for my wreath of mourning, the lily looked
too large, and the laurel looked too solemn. And I

(51:58):
found nothing frail enough nor slender to serve as an
offering to the years that were dead. And at last
I made a slender wreath of daisies, in the manner
that I had seen them maid in one of the
years that is dead. This said I, is scarce, less fragile,
or less frail than one of those delicate forgotten years.

(52:22):
Then I took my wreath in my hand and went
from here. And when I had come by paths of
mystery to that romantic land, where the valley that rumor
told of lies close to the mountainous moon, I searched
among the grass for those poor slight years, for whom
I brought my sorrow and my wreath. And when I

(52:43):
found there nothing in the grass, I said Timus shattered
them and swept them away, and left not even any
faint remains. But looking upward at the blaze of the moon,
I suddenly saw Colossi sitting near and towering up and
blotting out the stars and filling the night.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
With blackness, and.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
At those idol's feet I saw praying and making obeisance
kings and the days that are, and all times, and
all cities, and all nations, and all their gods. Neither
the smoke of incense, nor of the sacrifice burning reached
those colossal heads. They sat there, not to be measured,

(53:29):
not to be overthrown, not to be worn away. I said,
who are those? One answered alone, the immortals. And I said, sadly,
I came not to see dread gods, but I came
to shed my tears and to offer flowers at the

(53:49):
feet of certain little years that are dead and may
not come again.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
He answered me.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
These are the years that are dead alone, the immortals,
all years to be are their children. They fashioned their
smiles and their laughter, all earthly kings. They have crowned,
all gods. They have created. All the events to be
flow down from their feet like a river. The worlds

(54:19):
are flying pebbles that they have already thrown, And Time
and all his centuries behind him kneel there with bended
crests in token of vassalage, at their potent feet. And
when I heard this, I turned away with my wreath
and went back to my own land, comforted. A moral

(54:44):
little tale. There was once an earnest Puritan who held
it wrong to dance, and for his principles he labored hard.
His was a zealous life, and there loved him. All
of those who hated the dance, and those that loved
the dance respected him too. They said, he is a
pure good man that acts according to his lights. He

(55:08):
did much to discourage dancing, and helped to close several
Sunday entertainments. Some kinds of poetry, he said, he liked,
but not the fanciful kind, as that might corrupt the
thoughts of the very young. He always dressed in black.
He was interested in morality, and was quite sincere, And
there grew to be much respect on earth for his

(55:30):
honest face and his flowing pure white beard. One night
the devil appeared to him in a dream and said,
well done. Avaunt said that earnest man, No, no friend,
said the devil, dare not to call me friend. He answered, gravely,
Come calm, friend, said the devil. Have you not done

(55:50):
my work? Have you not put apart the couples that
would dance? Have you not checked their laughter and their
accursed mirth. Have you not worn my livery of black? O, friend, friend,
you do not know what a detestable thing it is
to sit in hell and hear people being happy and
singing in theaters, and singing in the fields, and whispering

(56:13):
after dances under the moon. And he fell to cursing frightfully.
It is you, said the puritan, that put into their
hearts the evil desire to dance. And black is God's
own livery, not yours. And the devil laughed contemptuously and spoke.
He only made the silly colors, he said, And useless

(56:35):
dawns on hill slopes facing south, and butterflies flapping along
them as soon as the sun rose high, and foolish
maidens coming out to dance, and the warm, mad west wind,
and worst of all, that pernicious influence love. And when
the devil said that God made love, that earnest man

(56:56):
sat up in bed and shouted, blasphemy. Blasphemy, it's true,
said the devil. It isn't either, said the village fools,
muttering and whispering two by two in the woods when
the harvest moon is high. It's as much as I
can bear even to see them dancing, then said the man,
I have mistaken right for wrong, But as soon as

(57:17):
I wake I will fight you. Yet, oh no, you don't,
said the devil. You don't wake up out of this sleep.
And somewhere far away, Hell's black steel doors were opened,
and arm in arm, those two were drawn within, and
the doors shut behind them. And still they went arm
in arm, trudging further and further into the deeps of Hell.

(57:41):
And it was that puritan's punishment to know that those
that he cared for on earth would do evil as
he had done. The return of song. The swans are
singing again, said to one another the god, and looking downwards,

(58:02):
for my dreams had taken me to Zumfair and far Valhalla,
I saw below me an iridescent bubble, not greatly larger
than a star, shine beautifully but faintly. And up and
up from it, looking larger and larger, came a flock
of white, innumerable swans, singing and singing and singing, till

(58:25):
it seemed as though even the gods were wild ships
swimming in music. What is it, I said to one
that was humble among the gods. Only a world has ended,
he said to me, And the swans are coming back
to the gods, returning the gift of song. A whole
world dead, I said, dead, said he that was humble

(58:49):
among the gods. The worlds are not for ever. Only
song is immortal. Look, look, he said, there will be
a new one soon. And I looked and saw the
larks going down from the gods spring. In town, at

(59:12):
a street corner, sat and played with a wind winter disconsolate,
still tingled the fingers of the passers by, and still
their breath was visible, And still they huddled their chins
into their coats. When turning a corner they met with
a new wind. Still windows lighted early, sent out into

(59:35):
the street the thought of romantic comfort by evening fires.
These things still were. Yet the throne of winter tottered,
and every breeze brought tidings of further fortresses lost on
lakes or boreal hill slopes. And not any longer as
a king did winter appear in those streets, as when

(59:57):
the city was decked with gleaming white to greet him
as a conqueror. And he rode in with his glittering
icicles and haughty retinue of prancing winds. But he sat
there with a little wind at the corner of the street,
like some old blind beggar with his hungry dog. And
as to some old blind beggar, death approaches, and the

(01:00:20):
alert ears of the sightless man prophetically here his far
off footfall. So there came suddenly to Winter's ears the
sound from some neighboring garden of Spring approaching. As she
walked on Daisy's and Spring approaching. Looked that, huddled in
glorious Winter begone, said Spring. There is nothing for you

(01:00:44):
to do here, said Winter to her. Nevertheless, he drew
about him his gray and battered cloak, and rose and
called to his little bitter wind, and up a side
street that led northward, strode away. Pieces of paper and
tall all clouds of dust went with him as far
as the city's outer gate. He turned then and called

(01:01:06):
to Spring. You can do nothing in this city, he said.
Then he marched homeward over plains and sea, and heard
his old winds howling. As he marched. The ice broke
up behind him and foundered like navies. To left and
to right of him flew the flocks of sea birds,

(01:01:26):
and far before him the geese's triumphant cry went like
a Clarion. Greater and greater grew his stature as he
went northwards, and ever more kingly his mien. Now he
took baronies at a stride, and now counties, and came
again to the snow white frozen lands, where the wolves

(01:01:47):
came out to meet him, and, draping himself anew with
old gray clouds, strode through the gates of his invincible home,
two old ice barriers, swinging on pillars of ice that
had never known the sun. So the town was left
to spring, and she peered about to see what she
could do with it. Presently, she saw a dejected dog

(01:02:11):
coming prowling down the road, so she sang to him,
and he gamboled. I saw him next day, strutting by
with something of an air. Where there were trees. She
went to them and whispered, and they sang the arboreal
song that only trees can hear, and the green buds
came peeping out as stars, while yet it is twilight. Secretly,

(01:02:34):
one by one she went to gardens and awaked from
dreaming the warm, maternal earth in little patches, bare and desolate,
she called up like a flame, the golden Crookus, for
its purple brother, Like an emperor's ghost. She gladdened the
graceless backs of untidy houses. Here with a weed, there

(01:02:57):
with a little grass. She said to the air, be joyous.
Children began to know that Dacy's blue in unfrequented corners.
Buttonholes began to appear in the coats of the young men.
The work of spring was accomplished. How the enemy came
to Thlunarena. It had been prophesied of old and foreseen

(01:03:21):
from the ancient days, that its enemy would come upon Flunena,
and the date of its doom was known, and the
gate by which it would enter. Yet none had prophesied
of the enemy who he was, save that he was
of the gods, though he dwelt with men. Meanwhile, Flunorena,

(01:03:42):
that secret lamassary, that chief cathedral of wizardry, was the
terror of the valley in which it stood, and of
all lands round about it. So narrow and high were
the windows, and so strange when lighted at night, that
they seemed to regard men with the demoniac leer of
something that had a secret.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
In the dark.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Who were the magicians and the deputy magicians, and the
great arch wizard of that furtive place nobody knew, for
they went veiled and hooded, and cloaked completely in black.
Though her doom was close upon her, and the enemy
of prophecy should come that very night through the open
southward door that was named the Gate of the Doom.

(01:04:28):
Yet that rocky edifice, the Lunrena, remained mysterious, still venerable, terrible, dark,
and dreadfully crowned with her doom. It was not often
that anyone dared wander near to Thlunrena by night, when
the moan of the magicians invoking we know not whom
rose faintly from inner chambers, scaring the drifting bats. But

(01:04:53):
on the last night of all the man from the
black thatched cottage by the five pine trees came because
he would see Thlunraena once again before the enemy that
was divine, but that dwelt with men, should come against it,
and it should be no more. Up the dark valley
he went like a bold man, but his fears were

(01:05:15):
thick upon him. His bravery bore their weight, but stooped
a little beneath them. He went in at the southward
gate that is named the Gate of the Doom. He
came into a dark hall, and up a marble stairway,
passed to see the last of Thlunraena. At the top

(01:05:35):
a curtain of black velvet hung, and he passed into
a chamber heavily hung with curtains, with a gloom in
it that was blacker than anything they could account for.
In a somber chamber beyond, seen through a vacant archway,
magicians with lighted tapers plied their wizardry and whispered incantations.

(01:05:58):
All the rats in the place were passing away, going
whimpering down the stairway. The man from the black thatched
cottage passed through that second chamber. The magicians did not
look at him and did not cease to whisper. He
passed from them through heavy curtains, still a black velvet,

(01:06:18):
and came into a chamber of black marble, where nothing stirred.
Only one taper burned. In the third chamber, there were
no windows on the smooth floor, and under the smooth
wall a silk pavilion stood with its curtains drawn close together.
This was the holy of holies, at that ominous place,

(01:06:42):
its inner mystery. One on each side of it, dark
figures crouched either of men or women, or cloaked stone
or beasts trained to be silent. When the awful stillness
of the mystery was more than he could bear, the
man from the black thatched cottage by the five pine

(01:07:03):
trees went up to the silk pavilion, and with a
bold and nervous clutch of the hand, drew one of
the curtains aside, and saw the inner mystery, and laughed.
And the prophecy was fulfilled, and thlun Reena was never
more a terror to the valley. But the magicians passed

(01:07:26):
away from their terrific halls and fled through the open fields,
wailing and beating their breasts for laughter. Was the enemy
that was doomed to come against Thlumrahena to her southward
gate that was named the gate of doom. And it
is of the gods that dwells with man a losing game.

(01:07:52):
Once in a tavern, man met face to skull with death.
Men entered gaily, but Death gave no greeting. He sat
with his jowl morosely over an ominous wine. Come, come,
said man. We have been antagonists long, and if I
were losing, if I should not be surly, but Death
remained unfriendly, watching his bowl of wine, and gave no

(01:08:16):
word in answers. Then Man solicitously moved nearer to him,
and speaking cheerily. Still, come, come, he said again, you
must not resent defeat. And still Death was gloomy and
cross and sipped at his infamous wine, and would not
look up at Man, and would not be companionable. But

(01:08:36):
Man hated gloom, either in beast or God, and it
made him unhappy to see his adversaries discomfort, all the
more because he was the cause. And still he tried
to cheer him. Have you not slain the dinotherium, he said,
have you not put out the moon? Why he will
beat me yet? And with a dry and barking sound,

(01:08:59):
Death wept, and nothing said, And presently Man arose and
went wandering away. For he knew not if Death wept
out of pity for his opponent, or because he knew
that he should not have such sport again when the
old game was over and Man was gone, or whether
because perhaps for some hidden reason, he could never repeat

(01:09:21):
on earth his triumph over the moon, taking up Piccadilly,
going down Piccadilly one day and nearing Grosvenor place. I saw,
if my memory is not at fault, some workmen, with
their coats off, or so they seemed. They had pickaxes
in their hands, and wore corduroyed trousers and that little

(01:09:42):
leather band below the knee that goes by the astonishing
name of York to London. They seemed to be working
with peculiar vehemence, so that I stopped and asked one
what they were doing. We are taking up Piccadilly, he
said to me, But at this time of year, I said,
is it usual in June? We are not what we seem?

(01:10:04):
Said he, Oh, I see, I said, ere doing it
for a joke. Well, not exactly that, he answered me,
for a bet, I said, not precisely, said he. And
then I looked at the bit that they had already picked.
And though it was broad daylight over my head, it
was darkness down there, all full of the southern stars.

(01:10:28):
It was noisy and bad, and we grew a weary
of it, said he, that, poor cordy trousers, We are
not what we appeared. They were taking up Piccadilly altogether.
After the fire when that happened, which had been so
long in happening, and the world hid a black, uncharted star.

(01:10:51):
Certain tremendous creatures out of some other world came peering
among the cinders to see if there were anything there
that it were worth while to remember. They spoke with
the great things that the world was known to have had.
They mentioned the mammoth, and presently they saw man's temples
silent and windowless, staring like empty skulls. Some great thing

(01:11:14):
has been here, one said, in these huge places it
was the mammoth, said one, something greater than he said another.
And then they found that the greatest thing in the
world had been the dreams of man the city in

(01:11:36):
time as well as in space. My fancy roams far
from here. It led me once to the edge of
certain cliffs that were low and red, and rose up
out of a desert. A little way off in the
desert there was a city. It was evening, and I
sat and watched the city. Presently I saw men by

(01:11:57):
threes and fours come softly steel out of that city's gate,
to the number of about twenty. I heard the hum
of men's voices speaking at evening. It is well they
are gone, they said, It is well they are gone.
We can do business now. It is well.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
They are gone.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
And the men that had left the city sped away
over the sand, and so passed into the twilight. Who
are these men, I said to my glittering leader, the poets,
my fancy, answered, the poets and artists. Why do they
steal away? I said to him, And why are the
people glad that they have gone? He said, It must

(01:12:40):
be some doom that is going to fall in the city.
Something has worn them, and they have stolen away. Nothing
may warn the people. I heard the wrangling voices, glad
with commerce rise up from the city. And then I
also departed, for there was an ominous look on the
face of the sky. And only a thousand years later

(01:13:03):
I passed that way, and there was nothing even among
the weeds of what had been that city.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
The food of death.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Death was sick, but they brought him bread that the
modern bakers make, whitened with alum, and the tinned meats
of Chicago, with a pinch of our modern substitute for salt.
They carried him into the dining room of a great hotel.
In that close atmosphere, Death breathed more freely, and there

(01:13:37):
they gave him their cheap Indian tea. They brought him
a bottle of wine that they called Champagne. Death drank
it up. They brought a newspaper and looked up the
patent medicines. They gave him the foods that had recommended
for invalids, and a little medicine as prescribed in the paper.
They gave him some milk and borax, such as children

(01:14:00):
in England. Death arose ravening strong, and strode again through
the cities.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
The lonely idol.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
I had from a friend, an old outlandish stone, a
little swine faced idle, to whom no one prayed. And
when I saw his melancholy case, as he sat cross
legged at receipt of prayer holding a little scourge, that
the years had broken and no one heeded the scourge,
and no one prayed, and no one came with squealing sacrifice.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
And he had been a god.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Then I took pity on the little forgotten thing and
prayed to it, as perhaps they prayed long since before
the coming of the strange dark ships, and humbled myself
and said, oh idle idle of the hard, pale stone,
invincible to the years, oh scourge holder, give year. For behold,

(01:15:01):
I pray, o little pale green image, whose wanderings are
from far, Know thou that here in Europe and in
other lands near by, too soon there pass from us
the sweets and psalm and the lion's strength of youth.
Too soon do their cheeks fade, their hair grow gray,

(01:15:23):
and our beloved die too brittle is beauty, Too far
off is fame, and the years are gathered too soon.
There are leaves, leaves falling everywhere, falling. There is autumn
among men, autumn and reaping failure. There is struggle, dying
and weeping, And all that is beautiful hath not remained,

(01:15:47):
but is even as the glory of mourning upon the water.
Even our memories are gathered too, with the sound of
the ancient voices, the pleasant ancient voices that come to
our ears no more. The very gardens of our childhood
fade and their dims with the speed of the years.

(01:16:08):
Even the mind's own eye, oh be not any more
the friend of time, For the silent hurry of his
malevolent feet have trodden down. What's fairest. I almost hear
the whimper of the years running behind him, hound like,
and it takes few to tear us. All that is beautiful.

(01:16:30):
He crushes down as a big man tramples daisies. All
that is fairest, How very fair are the little children
of men. It is autumn with all the world, and
the stars weep to see it. Therefore, no longer be
the friend of time, who will not let us be

(01:16:51):
and be not good to him, But pity us, and
let lovely things live on for the sake of our tears.
Thus prayed I, out of compassion, one windy day to
the snout faced idol, to whom no one kneeled, the sphinx.
In Thebes, Massachusetts, there was a woman in a steel

(01:17:16):
built city who had all that money could buy. She
had gold and dividends, and trains and houses, and she
had pets to play with. But she had no sphinx.
So she besought them to bring her alive sphinx. And
therefore they went to the menageries, and then to the

(01:17:37):
forests and the desert places, and yet they could find
no sphinx. And she would have been content with a
little lion, but that one was already owned by a
woman she knew. So they had to search the world
again for a sphinx, and still there was none. But
they were not men that it is easy to baffle.

(01:18:00):
And at last they found a sphinx in a desert
at evening, watching a ruined temple whose god she had
eaten hundreds of years ago when her hunger was on her.
And they cast chains on her, who was still with
an ominous stillness, and took her westwards with them and
brought her home. And so the sphinx came to the

(01:18:22):
steel built city, and the woman was very glad that
she owned a sphinx. But the sphinx stared long into
her eyes one day and softly asked a riddle the woman,
and the woman could not answer, and she died. And
the sphinx is silent again, and none knows what she

(01:18:45):
will do.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
The reward.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
One spirit goes further in dreams than it does by day.
Wandering once by night from a factory city, I came
to the edge of hell. The place was foul with
cinders and cast off things, and jagged, half buried things
with shapeless edges, and there was a huge angel with
a hammer, building in plaster and steel. I wondered what

(01:19:16):
he did in that dreadful place. I hesitated, then asked
him what he was building. We are adding to hell,
he said. To keep pace with the times. Don't be
too hard on them, I said, for I had just
come out of a compromising age and a weakening country.
The angel did not answer. It won't be as bad

(01:19:40):
as the old hell, will it? I said? Worse, said
the angel. How can you reconcile it with your conscience
as a minister of grace? I said, to inflict such
a punishment They talked like this in the city whence
I had come and I could not avoid the habit
of it. They have invented an you cheap yeast, said

(01:20:01):
the angel. I looked at the legend on the walls
of the hell that the angel was building, the words
written in flame. Every fifteen seconds they changed their color. Yeast, Oh,
the great new yeast. It builds up body and brain
and something more. They shall look at it forever, the

(01:20:22):
angel said. But they drove a perfectly legitimate trade. I said,
the law loud it. The angel went on hammering into
place the huge steel uprights. You are very revengeful, I said,
Do you never rest from doing this terrible work? I
rest at one Christmas day? The angel said, and looked

(01:20:42):
and saw little children dying of cancer. I shall go
on now until the fires are lit. It is very
hard to prove. I said that the yeast is as
bad as you think. After all, I said, they must live.
And the angel made no answer, but went on building

(01:21:03):
his hell. The trouble in Leafy Green Street. She went
to the idol shop in moles Hills Street, where the
old man mumbles, and said, I want a god to
worship when it is wet. The old man reminded her
of the heavy penalties that brightly attached to idolatry, and

(01:21:26):
when he had enumerated all, she answered him as was meet,
give me a god to worship when it is wet.
And he went to the back places of his shop
and sought out and brought her a god. The same
was carved of gray stone and wore a propitious look,
and was named, as the old man mumbled, the god

(01:21:48):
of rainy cheerfulness. Now it may be that long confinement
of the house effects adversely the liver, or these things
may be of the soul, But certain it is that
on a rainy day her spirits so far descended that
those cheerful creatures came within sight of the pit, and
having tried cigarettes to no good end, she bethought her

(01:22:09):
of moles Hill Street, and the mumbling man he brought
the gray idol forth and mumbled of guarantees, although he
put nothing on paper. And she paid him there and
then his preposterous price, and took the idol away. And
on the next wet day that there ever was, she
prayed to the gray stone idol that she had bought

(01:22:31):
the god of rainy cheerfulness, who knows with what ceremony
or what lack of it, And so brought down on
her in Leafy Green Street, in the prosperous house at
the corner that doom of which all men speak.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
The mist.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
The mist said, unto the Mist, let us go up
into the downs. And the mist came up weeping. And
the mist went into the high places in the hollows,
and clumps of trees in the distance stood ghostly.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
In the haze.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
That I went to a prophet, one who loved the downs,
and I said to him, why does the mist come
up weeping into the downs when it goes into the
high places in the hollows. And he answered, the mist
is the company of a multitude of souls who never
saw the downs and now are dead.

Speaker 5 (01:23:29):
Therefore they come up weeping into the downs who are
dead and never saw them.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
Furrow Maker.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
He was all in black, but his friend was dressed
in brown. Members of two old families. Is there any
change in the way you build your houses? Said he
in black. No change, said the other. And you we
change not, he said. A man went by in the distance,
riding a bicycle. He is always changing, said the one

(01:24:04):
in black, of late, almost every century. He is uneasy,
always changing. He changes the way he builds his house,
does he not, said the brown one. So my family say,
said the other. They say he is changed of late.
They say he takes much to cities, the brown one said.

(01:24:25):
My cousin, who lives in Belfries, tells me, so, said
the black one. He says he is much in cities,
and there he grows lean, said the brown one. Yes,
he grows lean. Is it true what they say, said
the brown one. Caw, said the black one. Is it
true that he cannot live many centuries? No, no, said

(01:24:47):
the black one. Furrow Maker will not die. We must
not lose furrow Maker. He has been foolish of late.
He has played with smoke and is sick. His engines
have wearied him in his cities are evil. Yes, he
is very sick, but in a few centuries he will
forget his folly, and we shall not lose furrow Maker.
Time out of mind. He has delved, and my family

(01:25:10):
have got their food from the raw earth behind him.
He will not die, But they say, do they not?
Said the brown one, His cities are noisome, and that
he grows sick in them and can run no longer,
And that it is with him as it is with
us when we grow too many in the grass has
the bitter taste in the rainy season, and our young

(01:25:31):
grow bloated and die. Who says it, replied the black
one pigeon. The brown one answered, he came back all dirty,
and Hare went down to the edge of the cities once.
He says it too. Man was too sick to chase him.
He thinks that man will die, and his wicked friend
dog with him. Dog, he will dye, that nasty fellow dog,

(01:25:52):
he will die too, the dirty fellow pigeon. And Hare
said the black one. We shall not lose furrow Maker,
who told her he will not die. His brown friend said,
who told may? The black one said, My family and
his have understood each other times out of mind. We
know what follies will kill each other, and what each

(01:26:13):
may survive. And I say that furrow maker will not die.
He will die, said the brownlae caw, said the other.
And man said in his heart, just one invention more.
There is something I want to do with petrol yet,
and then I will give it all and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Go back to the woods.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
Lobster salad. I was climbing round the perilous outside of
the palace of Colquonombros, so far below me that in
the tranquil twilight and clear air of those lands, I
could only barely see them lay the craggy tops of
the mountains. It was along no battlements or terrace edge.

(01:26:58):
I was climbing, but on the sheer face of the
wall itself, getting what foothold I could where the boulders joined.
Had my feet been bare, I was done. But though
I was in my night shirt, I had on stout
leather boots, and their edges somehow held in those narrow cracks.
My fingers and wrists were aching. Had it been possible

(01:27:22):
to stop for a moment, I might have been lured
to give us second look at the fearful peaks of
the mountains down there in the twilight. And this must
have been fatal. That the thing was all a dream.
As beside the point, we have fallen in dreams before.
But it is well known that if in one of
those falls you ever hit the ground, you die. I

(01:27:46):
had looked at those menacing mountain tops, and knew well
that such a fall as the one I feared, must
have such a termination. Then I went on, it is
strange what differences that can be in different boulders, every
one gleaming with the same white light, and every one
chosen to match the rest by minions of ancient kings.

(01:28:10):
When your life depends on the edges of every one,
you come to those edges seemed strangely different. It was
of no avail to overcome the terror of one, for
the next would give you a hold in quite a
different way, or hand you over to death in a
different manner. Some were too sharp to hold, and some

(01:28:31):
too flush with the wall. Those whose hold was the
best crumbled the soonest. Each rock had its different terror,
And then there were those things that followed behind me,
And at last I came to a breach made long
ago by earthquake, lightning, or war. I should have had

(01:28:52):
to go down a thousand feet to get round it,
and they would come up with me while I was
doing that. For certain sake, apes that I have not
mentioned as yet, things that had tigerish teeth and were
born and bred on that wall, had pursued me all
the evening. In any case, I could have gone no farther,

(01:29:13):
nor did I know what the king would do along
whose wall I was climbing. It was time to drop
and be done with it, or stop and await those apes.
And then it was that I remembered a pin thrown
carelessly down out of an evening tie in another world
to the one where grew that glittering wall, and lying

(01:29:36):
now if no evil chance had removed it, on a
chest of drawers by my bed. The apes were very
close and hurrying, for they knew my fingers were slipping,
and the cruel peaks of those infernal mountains seemed surer
of me than the apes. I reached out, with a
desperate effort of will towards where the pin lay on

(01:29:58):
the chest of drawers. I grew about. I found it
I ran it into my arm, saved the return of
the exiles. The old man with a hammer and the
one eyed man with a spear were seated by the roadside,
talking as I came up the hill. It isn't as

(01:30:20):
though they hadn't asked us. The one with the hammer said,
there ain't no more than twenty as knows about it,
said the other. Twenty's twenty, said the first. After all
these years, said the one eyed man with a spear,
after all these years, we might go back just once,
of course we might, said the other. Their clothes were old,

(01:30:42):
even for laborers. The one with the hammer had a
leather apron full of holes and blackened, and their hands
looked like leather. But whatever they were, they were English,
and this was pleasant to see. After all the motors
that had passed me that day with their burden of
mixed and doubtful nationalities. When they saw me, the one

(01:31:05):
with the hammer touched his greasy cap. Might we make
so bold, sir, he said, as to ask the way
to Stonehenge. We never ought to go, mumbled the other plaintively,
there's not more'n twenty as knows. But I was bicycling
there myself, to see the place. So I pointed out
the way and rode on at once. For there was

(01:31:27):
something so utterly servile about them both that I did
not care for their company. They seemed, by their wretched mien,
to have been persecuted or partily neglected for many years.
I thought that very likely they had done long terms
of penal servitude. When I came to Stonehenge, I saw

(01:31:48):
a group of about a score of men standing among
the stones. They asked me with some solemnity, if I
was expecting any one, and when I said no, they
spoke to me no more. It was about three miles
back where I left those strange old men, that I
had not been in the stone circle long when they appeared,
coming with great strides along the road. When they saw them,

(01:32:12):
all the people took off their hats and acted very strangely,
and I saw that they had a goat, which they
led up then to the old altar stone, and the
two old men came up with their hammer and spear,
and began apologizing plaintively for the liberty they had taken
in coming back to that place, And all the people

(01:32:33):
knelt on the grass before them, and then, still kneeling
they killed the goat by the altar, and when the
two old men saw this, they came up with many
excuses and eagerly sniffed the blood. And at first this
made them happy, but soon the one with a spear
began to whimper. It used to be men, he lamented,

(01:32:57):
it used to be men. And the twenty men began
looking uneasily at each other, and the plaint of the
one eyed man went on in that tearful voice, and
all of a sudden they all looked at me. I
do not know who the two old men were, or
what any of them were doing, but there are moments

(01:33:18):
when it is clearly time to go. And I left
them there and then, and just as I got up
on to my bicycle, I heard the plaintive voice of
the one with the hammer, apologizing for the liberty he
had taken in coming back to Stonehenge. But after all
these years, I heard him crying, after all these years,

(01:33:39):
And the one with a spear said, yes, after three
thousand years nature and time through the streets of Coventry
one winter's night, strode a triumphant spirit behind him, stooping, unkempt,
utterly ragged, wearing the clothes, and look that outcasts have, whining, weeping,

(01:34:05):
reproaching an ill used spirit. Tried to keep pace with
him continually. She plucked him by the sleeve and cried
out to him as she panted after, and he strode resolute.
All it was a bitter night. Yet it did not
seem to be the cold that she feared, ill clad
though she was. But the trams and the ugly shops,

(01:34:27):
and the glare of the factories, from which she continually
winced as she hobbled on, and the pavement hurt her feet.
He that strode on in front seemed to care for nothing.
It might be hot or cold, silent or noisy pavement
or open fields. He merely had the air of striding on.
And she caught up and clutched him by the elbow.

(01:34:50):
I heard her speak in her unhappy voice. You scarcely
heard it for the noise of the traffic. You have
forgotten me, she complained to him. You have forsaken me. Here.
She pointed to Coventry with a wide wave of her
arm and seemed to indicate other cities beyond. And he
gruffly told her to keep pace with him, and that

(01:35:11):
he did not forsake her, And she went on with
her pitiful lamentation. My anemonies are dead for miles, she said,
All my woods are fallen, and still the cities grow.
My child man is unhappy, and my other children are dying,
and still the cities grow. And you have forgotten me.

(01:35:31):
And then he turned angrily on her, almost stopping in
that stride of his that began when the stars were made.
When have I ever forgotten you?

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
He said? Or when forsaken you?

Speaker 1 (01:35:43):
Ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And
is not Nineveh gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you?
Where tarsish and tire? And you have said I forget you?
And at this she seemed to take a little comfort.
I heard her speak once more, looking wistfully at her companion.

(01:36:05):
When will the fields come back?

Speaker 2 (01:36:07):
And the grasp for my children soon soon? He said?

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
Then they were silent, and he strode away, she limping
along behind him, and all the clocks in the towers
chimed as he passed the song of the blackbird. As
the poet passed the thorn tree, the blackbird sang, However

(01:36:35):
do you do it? The poet said, for he knew
bird language. It was like this, said the blackbird. It
really was the most extraordinary thing I made that song
last spring. It came to me all of a sudden,
there was the most beautiful she blackbird that the world
has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are

(01:36:58):
at night, feathers were blacker than the night itself, and
nothing was as yellow as her beak. She could fly
much faster than the lightning. She was not an ordinary
she blackbird. There has never been any other like her
at all. I did not dare go near her because
she was so wonderful. One day last spring, when it

(01:37:23):
got warm again, it had been cold, we ate berries.
Things were quite different then, But spring came and it
got warm. One day I was thinking how wonderful she was,
and it seemed so extraordinary to think that I should
ever have seen her, the only really wonderful she blackbird
in the world. That I opened my beak to give

(01:37:45):
a shout. And then this song came, and there had
never been anything like it before, And luckily I remembered
it the very song that I sang just now. But
what is so extraordinary. The most amazing occurrence of that
marvelous day was that no sooner had I sung the

(01:38:06):
song than that very bird, the most wonderful she blackbird
in the world, flew right up to me and sat
quite close to me on the same tree. I never
remember such wonderful times as those. Yes, the song came
in a moment, and as I was saying, and an
old wanderer walking with a stick came by, and the

(01:38:29):
blackbird flew away. And the poet told the old man
the blackbird's wonderful story. That song new, said the wanderer,
Not a bit of it. God made it years ago.
All the blackbirds used to sing it when I was young.
It was new. Then the messengers, one wandering Nyparnassus, chasing hares,

(01:38:54):
heard the high muses, take us a message to the
golden town. Thus the muses. But the man said, they
do not call a knee, not such as me speak
the muses, and the muses called him by name. Take
us a message, they said, to the golden town. And

(01:39:14):
the man was downcast, for he would have chased hairs.
And the muses called again. And when whether in valleys
or on high crags of the hills, he still heard
the muses, he went at last to them, and heard
their message, though he would fain have left it to
other men, and chased the fleet hares still in happy valleys.

(01:39:37):
And they gave him a wreath of laurels carved out
of emeralds, as only the Muses can carve. By this,
they said, they shall know that you come from the Muses.
And the man went from that place and dressed in
scarlet silks as befitted one that came from the high Muses,
and through the gateway of the Golden Town he ran

(01:39:59):
and cried his message, and his cloak floated behind him.
All silent sat the wise men and the aged they
of the Golden Town, cross legged. They sat before their houses,
reading from parchments a message of the Muses that they
sent long before. And the young man cried his message

(01:40:20):
from the Muses, and they rose up and said, thou
art not from the muses. Otherwise spake they, and they
stoned him, and he died. And afterwards they carved his
message upon gold and read it in their temples on holidays.
When were the muses rest, when are they weary? They

(01:40:43):
sent another messenger to the Golden Town, and they gave
him a wand of ivory to carry in his hand
with all the beautiful stories of the world wondrously carved thereon,
and only the Muses could have carved it. By this,
they said, they shall know that you come from the Muses.

(01:41:04):
And he came through the gateway of the Golden Town
with the message he had for its people. And they
rose up at once in the golden street. They rose
from reading the message that they had carved one gold.
The last who came, they said, came with a wreath
of laurels carved out of emeralds, as only the Muses
can call. You are not from the Muses. And even

(01:41:28):
as they had stoned the last, so also they stoned him.
And afterwards they carved his message on gold and laid
it up in their temples. When will the muses rest?
When are they weary? Even yet once again they sent
a messenger under the gateway into the Golden Town. And

(01:41:50):
for all that he wore a garland of gold, the
high Muses gave him a garland of king cups, soft
and yellow on his head, yet fashioned of pure gold.
And by whom but the muses? Yet did they stone
him the Golden town. But they had the message. And
what care the Muses? And yet they will not rest

(01:42:13):
for some while since I heard them call to me.
Go take our message, they said, unto the Golden town.
But I would not go. And they spake a second time.
Go take our message, they said, And still I would
not go, And they cried out a third time, go
take our message. And though they cried a third time,

(01:42:36):
I would not go. But morning and night they cried,
and through long evenings. When will the muses rest? When
are they weary? And when they would not cease to
call to me, I went to them, and I said,
the Golden town is the golden town no longer. They

(01:42:58):
have sold their pillars for grass, and their temples for money.
They have made coins out of their golden doors. It
is become a dark town.

Speaker 2 (01:43:08):
Full of trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
There is no ease in its streets. Beauty has left it,
and the old songs are gone. Go take our message,
they cried. And I said to the high muses, you
do not understand. You have no message for the Golden Town,
the holy city no longer. Go take our message, they cried,

(01:43:34):
What is your message? I said to the high muses.
And when I heard their message, I made excuses, dreading
to speak such things in the golden town. And again
they bade me go, and I said, I will not go.
None will believe me. And still the muses cry to
me all night long. They do not understand how should

(01:43:58):
they know the three tall sons. And at last Man
raised on high the final glory of his civilization, the
towering edifice of the ultimate city. Softly beneath him. In
the deeps of the earth, purred his machinery, fulfilling.

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):
All his needs.

Speaker 1 (01:44:21):
There was no more toil for man. There he sat
at ease, discussing the sex problem, and sometimes painfully, out
of forgotten fields. There came to his outer door, came
to the furthest rampart of the final glory of man,
a poor old woman begging, and always they turned her away.

(01:44:44):
This glory of man's achievement, this city was not for her.
It was nature that thus came begging in from the fields,
whom they always turned away. And away she went again,
alone to her fields. And one day she came again,
and again they sent her hens. But her three tall.

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):
Sons came too.

Speaker 1 (01:45:11):
These shall go in, she said, even these my sons,
to your city. And the three tall sons went in.
And these are nature's sons, the forlorn one's terrible children, war, famine,
and plague, yea. And they went in there and found

(01:45:31):
Man unawares in his city, still poring over his problems,
obsessed with his civilization, and never hearing their tread. As
those three came up behind compromise, they built their gorgeous home,
their city of glory, above the lair of the earthquake.

(01:45:55):
They built it of marble and gold, in the shining
youth of the world. There they feasted and fought, and
call'd their city immortal, and danced and sang songs to
the gods. None heeded the earthquake in all those joyous streets,
and down in the deeps of the earth, on the

(01:46:16):
black feet of the abyss, they that would conquer Man
mumbled long in the darkness, mumbled and goaded the earthquake
to try his strength with that city, to go forth
blithely at night, and to gnaw its pillars like bones.
And down in those grimy deeps, the earthquake answered them,
and would not do their pleasure, and would not stir

(01:46:39):
from thence, For who knew who they were? Who danced
all day where he rumbled? And what if The lords
of that city, that had no fear of his anger,
were haply. Even the gods and the centuries plodded by
on and on round the world. And one day they

(01:46:59):
that had done ants, they that had sung in that
city remember'd the lair of the earthquake in the deep
stown under their feet, and made plans one with another,
and sought to avert the danger. Sought to appease the
earthquake and turn his anger away. They sent down singing
girls and priests with oats and wine. They sent down

(01:47:24):
garlands and propitious berries down by dark steps to the
black depths of the earth. They sent peacocks newly slain,
and boys with burning spices, and their thin, white, sacred
cats with collars of pearls, all newly drawn from steam.

(01:47:44):
They sent huge diamonds down in coffers of teak and ointment,
and strange oriental dyes, arrows and armor, and the rings
of their queen. Oh ho, said the earthquake in the
cool of the earth. So they are not the gods

(01:48:11):
what we have come to. When the advertiser saw the
cathedral spires over the downs in the distance, he looked
at them and wept. If only he said this were
an advertisement of beef, all so nice, so nutritious, Try
it in your soup. Ladies like it the tomb of Pan.

(01:48:37):
Seeing they said that old time Pan is dead. Let
us now make a tomb for him, and a monument
that the dreadful worship of long ago may be remembered
and avoided by all. So said the people of the
enlightened lands, And they built a white and mighty tomb
of marble. Slowly it rose under the hands of the builders,

(01:49:01):
and longer every evening after sunset it gleamed with rays
of the departed sun. And many mourned for Pan while
the builders built. Many reviled him. Some called the builders
to cease and to weep for Pan, and others called
them to leave no memorial at all of so infamous

(01:49:21):
a god. That the builders built on steadily, And one
day all was finished, and the tomb stood there like
a steep sea cliff, and Pan was carved thereon with
humbled head, and the feet of angels pressed upon his neck.
And when the tomb was finished, the sun had already set,

(01:49:43):
but the afterglow was rosy on the huge bulk of Pan,
and presently all the enlightened people came and saw the
tomb and remembered Pan, who was dead, and all deplored
him at his wicked age. But a few wept apart
because of the death of Pan. But at evening, as

(01:50:05):
he stole out of the forest and slipped like a
shadow softly along the hills, Pam saw the tomb and laughed.
End of fifty one Tales by Edward John Morton, Drag's Plunkett,
Lord Dunseigne