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

prophecy, or some strange lore, that I shall never hear thy
voice again. And for this I give thee my forgiveness."
But he, repeating the oath that he had sworn, set out,
looking often backwards until the slope became too steep and
his face was set to the rock. It was in the morning that he
started, and he climbed all the day with little rest, where
every foothole was smooth with many feet. Before he reached
the top the sun disappeared from him, and darker and darker
grew the Inner Lands. Then he pushed on so as to see before
dark whatever thing Poltarnees had to show. The dusk was
deep over the Inner Lands, and the lights of cities twinkled
through the sea-mist when he came to Poltarnees's summit,
and the sun before him was not yet gone from the sky.
And there below him was the old wrinkled Sea, smiling and
murmuring song. And he nursed little ships with gleaming
sails, and in his hands were old regretted wrecks, and masts
all studded over with golden nails that he had rent in anger
out of beautiful galleons. And the glory of the sun was
among the surges as they brought driftwood out of isles of
spice, tossing their golden heads. And the grey currents
crept away to the south like companionless serpents that
love something afar with a restless, deadly love. And the
whole plain of water glittering with late sunlight, and the
surges and the currents and the white sails of ships were
all together like the face of a strange new god that has
looked a man for the first time in the eyes at the moment of
his death; and Athelvok, looking on the wonderful Sea, knew
why it was that the dead never return, for there is
something that the dead feel and know, and the living would
never understanding even though the dead should come and
speak to them about it. And there was the Sea smiling at
him, glad with the glory of the sun. And there was a haven
there for homing ships, and a sunlit city stood upon its
marge, and people walked about the streets of it clad in the
unimagined merchandise of far sea-bordering lands.
An easy slope of loose crumbled rock went from the top of
Poltarnees to the shore of the Sea.
For a long while Athelvok stood there regretfully,
knowing that there had come something into his soul that no
one in the Inner Lands could understand, where the thoughts
of their minds had gone no farther than the three little
kingdoms. Then, looking long upon the wandering ships, and
the marvellous merchandise from alien lands, and the unknown
colour that wreathed the brows of the Sea, he turned his
face to the darkness and the Inner Lands.
At that moment the Sea rang a dirge at sunset for all the
harm that he had done in anger and all the ruin wrought on
adventurous ships; and there were tears in the voice of the
tyrannous Sea, for he had loved the galleons that he had
overwhelmed, and he called all men to him and all living