by Lord Dunsany I WAS IN the pre-destined 11:08 from Goraghwood to Drogheda, when
I suddenly saw 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…

by Lord Dunsany ONCE Time as he prowled the world, his hair grey 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…

by Lord Dunsany 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 nearly three hundred feet to fall. And I could think of nothing but his…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

by Lord Dunsany FAME, AS SHE walked at evening in a city saw the painted face of Notoriety flaunting beneath a 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…

by Lord Dunsany “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…

The year is 1990. A twelve-year-old girl, ARIANNE, and her FATHER are seated in a restaurant in Rockwell, Illinois (formerly Bloomington). [Waitress enters with a tray of food] WAITRESS: Here you go: a veggie burger deluxe for the young lady, a power salad for her dad, and two Original-Recipe Fanta…