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again.
And for a long while then his mind reposed itself in such a dignified calm
that no thought stirred there at all, from which when he was aroused he cast
off his lethargy as a man emerges from the baths, refreshed, cleansed and
contented, and put away from his musings the things he had seen on the plain
as being evil and of the nature of dreams, or futile illusion, the results
of activity which troubleth calm. And then he turned his mind toward the
shape of God, the One, the Ineffable, who sits by the lotus lily, whose
shape is the shape of peace, and denieth activity, and went out his thanks
to him that he had cast all bad customs westward out of China as a woman
throws household dirt out of her basket far out into neighbouring gardens.
From thankfulness he turned to calm again, and out of calm to sleep.




Tales of Three Hemispheres -- Chapter 5



A PRETTY QUARREL
ON ONE of those unattained, and unattainable pinnacles that are known as the
Bleaks of Eerie, and 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 demigods.
The demi-gods are they that were born of earthly women, but their sires are
the elder gods who walked of old among men. Disguised they would go through
the villages sometimes in summer evenings, cloaked and unknown of men; but
the younger maidens knew them and always ran to them singing, for all that
their elders said: in evenings long ago they had danced to the woods of the
oak-trees. Their children dwelt out-of-doors beyond the dells of the
bracken, in the cool and heathery lands, and were now at war with the
dwarfs.
Dour and grim were the demi-gods and had the faults of both parents, and
would not mix with men but claimed the right of their fathers, and would not
play human games but forever were prophesying, and yet were more frivolous
than their mothers were, whom the fairies had long since buried in wild wood
gardens with more than human rites.
And being irked at their lack of rights and ill content with the land, and
having no power at all over the wind and snow, and caring little for the
powers they had, the demi-gods became idle, greasy, and slow; and the
contemptuous dwarfs despised them ever.
The dwarfs were contemptuous of all things savouring of heaven, and of
everything that was even partly divine. They were, so it has been said, of
the seed of man; but, being squat and hairy like to the beasts; they praised
all beastly things, and bestiality was shown reverence among them, so far as
reverence was theirs to show. So most of all they despised the discontent of
the demi-gods, who dreamed of the courts of heaven and power over wind and
snow; for what better, said the dwarfs, could demi-gods do than nose in the