"Book of Wonder, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like a maiden with a lamp, a
new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as it passed him. He put his
head down low to the scent of the flower, he lifted it up to be nearer the
unseen stars, he revelled through kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how
shall I tell you, ye that dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he
felt as he galloped? He felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana;
for lightness like those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds
'twixt heaven and sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some
bird racing up from the morning to sing in some city's spires before
daylight comes. He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a
song; the lightnings of his legendary sires, the earlier gods, began to mix
with his blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and all
men trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and now they
dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clio are these
wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that? Not all of us
have sat at historians' feet, but all have learned fable and myth at their
mothers' knees. And there were none that did not fear strange wars when
they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along the public ways. So he passed
from city to city.

By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or forest; before
dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in the dark, and
splashing out of it would trot to some high place to find the sunrise, and
to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings of his jubilant horn. And
lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, and the plains new-lit by the
day, and the leagues spinning by like water flung from a top, and that gay
companion, the loudly laughing wind, and men and the fears of men and their
little cities; and, after that, great rivers and waste spaces and huge new
hills, and then new lands beyond them, and more cities of men, and always
the old companion, the glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and
still his breath was even. "It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in
one's youth," said the young man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha," said the
wind of the hills, and the winds of the plain answered.

Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments, astrologers
sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle propehcies. "Is
he not swift?" said the young. "How glad he is," said the children.

Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop, till
he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edges of the
mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legend again such as
those in which he was cradled on the other side of the world, and which
fringe the marge of the world and mix with the twilight. And there a mighty
thought came into his untired heart, for he knew that he neared Zretazoola
now, the city of Sombelene.

It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured with evening
rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into their golden mist,
and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, the dreams in his heart
awoke and romantically he pondered all those rumours that used to come to