by Lord Dunsany 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,”…

by Lord Dunsany 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…

by Lord Dunsany 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, reproaching, an ill-used spirit tried to keep pace with him. Continually she plucked…

by Lord Dunsany I WAS CLIMBING round the perilous outside of the Palace of Colquonhombros. 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 I was climbing, but on the sheer…

by H. Millard HOMELESS JACK said “I had a dream, man, and in my dream Hitler came to me and spoke, saying” — * * * WHEN I WAS on Earth, I had a horrible nightmare of how the future might be if I didn’t work to change the future in my present. Unfortunately, the forces of evil won at that…

by Lord Dunsany 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…

by Lord Dunsany IN TIME as well as 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 threes and fours come softly stealing…

by Lord Dunsany WHEN THAT happened which had been so long in happening and the world hit a black, uncharted star, 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 of the great things that…

by Lord Dunsany I HEARD IT said that very far away from here, on the wrong side of the deserts of Cathay and in a country dedicate to winter, are all the years that are dead. And there a certain valley shuts them in and hides them, as rumor has it, from the world, but not from the sight of the moon nor from those…

by Lord Dunsany 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 Hare was the swifter of the two because he had such long ears, and others said the Tortoise was the swifter because anyone whose shell was so hard as that…