Death and Odysseus
by Lord Dunsany IN 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…
The Field
by Lord Dunsany WHEN ONE HAS seen Spring’s blossom fall in London, and Summer appear and ripen and decay, as it does early in cities, and one is in London still, then, at some moment or another, the country places lift their flowery heads and call to one with an urgent, masterful clearness, upland…
The Hen
by Lord Dunsany ALL ALONG the farmyard gables the swallows sat a-row, twittering
uneasily to one another, telling of many things, but thinking only of
Summer and 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…
uneasily to one another, telling of many things, but thinking only of
Summer and 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…
The Raft-Builders
by Lord Dunsany 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 awhile upon Oblivion’s sea. They will not carry much over those tides,…
Charon
by Lord Dunsany CHARON leaned forward and rowed. All things were one 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 a piece with Eternity.…
Taking Up Picadilly
by Lord Dunsany GOING DOWN Picadilly 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 corduroy trousers and that little leather band below the knee that goes by the astonishing name of “York-to-London.”…
The Reward
by Lord Dunsany ONE’S 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…
Furrow-Maker
by Lord Dunsany 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…
The Worm and the Angel
by Lord Dunsany 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 and walled…
The Prayer of the Flowers
by Lord Dunsany IT WAS THE VOICE of the flowers on the West wind, the lovable, the old, the lazy West wind, blowing ceaselessly, blowing sleepily, going Greecewards. “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…