Fifty One Tales by Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
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Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett] >> Fifty One Tales
"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 he did not forsake her. And she went on
with her pitiful lamentation.
"My anemones 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!"
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?" he said, "or when forsaken you
ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And is not Nineveh
gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you? Where Tarshish and
Tyre? 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. "When will the fields
come back and the grass for my children?"
"Soon, soon," he said: 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.
"How ever 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 at
night, her 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 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 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 occurence of that marvellous day, was that no sooner had I
sung the 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 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 nigh Parnassus chasing hares heard the high Muses.
"Take us a message to the Golden Town."
Thus sang the Muses.
But the man said: "They do not call to me. Not to such as me speak
the Muses."
And the Muses called him by name.
"Take us a message," they said, "to the Golden Town."
And the man was downcast for he would have chased hares.
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.
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 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 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 holy days.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? They 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."
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 upon gold. "The last who came," they said, "came with a
wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds, as only the Muses can
carve. You are not from the Muses." And even 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 for all that he wore a garland of gold that the high Muses
gave him, a garland of kingcups soft and yellow on his head, yet
fashioned of pure gold and by whom but the Muses, yet did they
stone him in the Golden Town. But they had the message, and what
care the Muses?
And yet they will not rest, 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 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 have sold their
pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins
out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble,
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.
"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 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 all his needs, 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.
This glory of Man's achievement, this city was not for her.
It was Nature that came thus 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 hence. But
her three tall sons came too.
"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 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. They built it of marble and gold in the shining
youth of the world. There they feasted and fought and called 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 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 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 that had danced, they that had sung in that city, remembered
the lair of the earthquake in the deeps down 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 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 sea, they sent huge diamonds down in
coffers of teak, and ointment and strange oriental dyes, arrows and
armor and the rings of their queen.
"Oho," said the earthquake in the coolth of the earth, "so they are
not the gods."
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 Beefo, so nice, so
nutritious, try it in your soup, ladies like it."
THE TOMB OF PAN
"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 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 a god.
But 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, 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 and his
wicked age. But a few wept apart because of the death of Pan.
But at evening as he stole out of the forest, and slipped like a shadow
softly along the hills, Pan saw the tomb and laughed.