Where the Tides Ebb and Flow - Lord Dunsany

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where the tides ebb and flow. By Lord Dumsony, I
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

(00:21):
me and slew me secretly and with ancient right, and
lit great tapers and carried me away. It was all
in London that the thing was done. And they went
furtively at the dead of night, along gray streets and
among mean houses, until they came to the river. And
the river and the tide of the sea were grappling

(00:41):
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 bone, because there was
no hell for it, and because Christian burial was denied me.

(01:06):
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 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

(01:28):
looked pale and small as they bobbed upon the tide.
And at once the glamor 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 stole
furtively away. Then the mud came back wearily and covered

(01:50):
all but my face. There I lay alone with quite
forgotten things, with drifting things that the tide 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,

(02:10):
But perception and thought were in my unhappy soul. The
dawn widened, and I saw the desolate houses that crowded
the march 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

(02:31):
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

(02:53):
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. At last the

(03:16):
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 again alone with the callous mud,
among the forgotten things that drift no more, and with

(03:40):
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

(04:01):
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

(04:22):
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 sepulcher of the sea. And

(04:42):
then the tide forsook me again to and fro. It
came about me for many years. Then the city council
found me and gave me decent burial. It was the
first grave that I had ever slept in. That very
nigh my friends came for me. They dug me up

(05:04):
and put me back again in the shallow hold 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

(05:26):
last of those men died who had once 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.

(05:52):
Almost at once men came with cloaks and tapers to
give me back to the mud, for the thing had
become a tradition and are right. 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

(06:14):
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

(06:39):
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,

(07:02):
and rode once more amongst the lordly shipping that was
driving 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,

(07:24):
and my bones he scattered among many isles, 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

(07:47):
work of the ebb, and gathered my bones from the
marge of sunny isles, and gleaned them all along the
mainland 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

(08:11):
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.

(08:31):
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,

(08:52):
or the comfortable lap of the sea. Sometimes men found
my bones and buried them, but the tradition never died,
and my friend's successors always brought them back. At last,
barges went no more, and there were fewer lights. Shaped
timbers no longer floated down the fairway, and there came

(09:15):
instead old wind a brooted 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

(09:37):
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

(10:01):
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

(10:24):
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 was still there.
Then he went, and I never saw men again. They
had passed away with London. A few days after the

(10:49):
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

(11:10):
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

(11:32):
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
caps of sky. Then, when there was nothing to be
heard in London but the myriad notes of that exultant song,

(11:55):
my soul rose up from the bones in the hole
in the mud and began to I'm heavenwards. And it
seemed that a lane way 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 I knew by a sign that

(12:15):
the mud should receive me no more, For suddenly I
found that I could weep. At this moment, I opened
my eyes in a 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

(12:36):
still wet upon my face, For one's restraint is feeble
while one sleeps. And 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, end of

(12:57):
where the tides ebb and flow.