"Dunsany, Lord - Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Poltarnees, Beholder of
Ocean

by Lord Dunsany


Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the
lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the
sea. Beyond them to the east there lies a desert, for ever
untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with
shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying
in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the
west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger
of the Polar wind. Like a great wall is the mountain to the
west. It comes up out of the distance and goes down into
the distance again, and it is named Poltarnees, Beholder of
Ocean. To the northward red rocks, smooth and bare of soil,
and without any speck of moss or herbage, slope up to the
very lips of the Polar wind, and there is nothing else there
but the noise of his anger. Very peaceful are the Inner
Lands, and very fair are their cities, and there is no war
among them, but quiet and ease. And they have no enemy but
age, for thirst and fever lie sunning themselves out in the
mid-desert, and never prowl into the Inner Lands. And the
ghouls and ghosts, whose highway is the night, are kept in
the south by the boundary of magic. And very small are
their pleasant cities, and all men are known to one another
therein, and bless one another by name as they meet in the
streets. And they have a broad, green way in every city
that comes in out of some vale or wood or downland, and
wanders in and out about the city between the houses and
across the streets; and the people walk along it never at
all, but every year at her appointed time Spring walks along
it from the flowery lands, causing the anemone to bloom on
the green way and all the early joys of hidden woods, or
deep, secluded vales, or triumphant downlands, whose heads
lift up so proudly, far up aloof from cities.
Sometimes waggoners or shepherds walk along this way,
they that have come into the city from over cloudy ridges,
and the townsmen hinder them not, for there is a tread that
troubleth the grass and a tread that troubleth it not, and
each man in his own heart knoweth which tread he hath. And
in the sunlit spaces of the weald and in the wold's dark
places, afar from the music of cities and from the dance of
the cities afar, they make there the music of the country
places and dance the country dance. Amiable, near and
friendly appears to these men the sun, and as he is genial
to them and tends their younger vines, so they are kind to
the little woodland things and any rumour of the fairies or