Lord Dunsany

by Lord Dunsany MY FRIEND, Mr. Douglas Ainslie, tells me that Sir James Barrie once told him this story. The story, or rather the fragment, was as follows. A man strolling into an auction somewhere abroad, I think it must have been France, for they bid in francs, found they were selling old clothes. And…

by Lord Dunsany ON ONE OF those unattained, and unattainable pinnacles that are known as the Bleaks of Eerie, an eagle was looking East with a hopeful presage of blood. For he knew, and rejoiced in the knowledge, that eastward over the dells the dwarfs were risen in Ulk, and gone to war with the demi-gods.…

by Lord Dunsany IT WAS dead of night and midwinter. A frightful wind was bringing sleet from the East. The long sere grasses were wailing. Two specks of light appeared on the desolate plain; a man in a hansom cab was driving alone in North China. Alone with the driver and the dejected horse. The driver wore…

by Lord Dunsany IN THE harbour, between the liner and the palms, as the huge ship’s passengers came up from dinner, at moonrise, each in his canoe, Ali Kareeb Ahash and Boob Aheera passed within knife thrust. So urgent was the purpose of Ali Kareeb Ahash that he did not lean over as his enemy slid by,…

by Lord Dunsany THE DUTIES of postman at Otford-under-the-Wold carried Amuel Sleggins farther afield than the village, farther afield than the last house in the lane, right up to the big bare wold and the house where no one went, no one that is but the three grim men that dwelt there and the secretive wife…

by Lord Dunsany OVER THE MARSHES hung the gorgeous night with all his wandering bands of nomad stars, and his whole host of still ones blinked and watched. Over the safe dry land to eastward, grey and cold, the first clear pallor of dawn was coming up above the heads of the immortal gods. Then, as they neared…

by Lord Dunsany I CAME ONE DAY upon a road that wandered so aimlessly that it was suited to my mood, so I followed it, and it led me presently among deep woods. Somewhere in the midst of them Autumn held his court, sitting wreathed with gorgeous garlands; and it was the day before his annual festival of the…

an adaptation of a story by Lord Dunsany
by D.G. Rossetti IN A WOOD older than record, a foster brother of the hills, stood the village of Aryathurion; and there was peace between the people of that village and all the folk who walked in the dark ways of the wood, whether they were human or of the tribes of the…

by Lord Dunsany ONE NIGHT I sat alone on the great down, looking over the edge of it at a murky, sullen city. All day long with its smoke it had troubled the holy sky, and now it sat there roaring in the distance and glared at me with its furnaces and lighted factory windows. Suddenly I became aware that I was…

by Lord Dunsany ONCE GOING down to the shore of the great sea I came upon the Whirlpool lying prone upon the sand and stretching his huge limbs in the sun. I said to him “Who art thou?” And he said: “I am named Nooz Wāna, the Whelmer of Ships, and from the Straits of Pondar Obed I am come, wherein…