"Dunsany, Lord - collection - Plays of Gods and Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

camel-track; that is the last we shall see of it.

Aoob:
We shall be in the desert then.

Bel-Narb:
The old angry desert.

Aoob:
How cunningly the desert hides his wells. You would
say he had an enmity with man. He does not welcome you
as the cities do.

Bel-Narb:
He HAS an enmity. I hate the desert.

Aoob:
I think there is nothing in the world so beautiful as
cities.

Bel-Narb:
Cities are beautiful things.

Aoob:
I think they are loveliest a little after dawn when
night falls off from the houses. They draw it away
from them slowly and let it fall like a cloak and stand
quite naked in their beauty to shine in some broad
river; and the light comes up and kisses them on the
forehead. I think they are loveliest then. The voices
of men and women begin to arise in the streets, scarce
audible, one by one, till a slow loud murmur arises and
all the voices are one. I often think the city speaks
to me then: she says in that voice of hers, "Aoob,
Aoob, who one of these days shall die, I am not
earthly, I have been always, I shall not die."

Bel-Narb:
I do not think that cities are loveliest at dawn. We
can see dawn in the desert any day. I think they are
loveliest just when the sun is set and a dusk steals
along the narrower streets, a kind of mystery in which
we can see cloaked figures and yet not quite discern
whose figures they be. And just when it would be dark,
and out in the desert there would be nothing to see but
a black horizon and a black sky on top of it, just then
the swinging lanterns are lighted up and lights come
out in windows one by one and all the colours of the
raiments change. Then a woman perhaps will slip from a
little door and go away up the street into the night,