"Lord Dunsany - Poltarnees, Beholder Of Ocean (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

old legend. And when the light of some little distant city
makesa slight flush upon the edge of the sky, and the happy
goldenwindows of the homesteads stare gleaming into the
dark, then the old and holy figure of Romance, cloaked even
tothe face, comes down out of hilly woodlands and bids dark
shadowsto rise and dance, and sends the forest creatures
forthto prowl, and lights in a moment in her bower of grass
thelittleglowworm's lamp, and brings a hush down over the
greylands, and out of it rises faintly on far-off hills the
voice of a lute. There are not in the world lands more
prosperousand happy thanToldees ,Mondath ,Arizim .
From these three little kingdoms that are named the Inner
Lands the young men stole constantly away. One by one they
went, and no one knew why they went save that they had a
longing to behold the Sea. Of this longing they spoke
little, but a young man would become silent for a few days,
andthen, one morning very early, he would slip away and
slowlyclimbPoltarnees's difficult slope, and having
attained the top pass over and never return. A few stayed
behindin the Inner Lands and became old men, but none that
hadever climbedPoltarnees from the very earliest times had
ever come back again. Many had gone upPoltarnees sworn to
return. Once a king sent all his courtiers, one by one, to
reportthe mystery to him, and then went himself; none ever
returned.
Now, it was the wont of the folk of the Inner Lands to
worshiprumours and legends of the Sea, and all that their
prophetsdiscovered of the Sea was writ in a sacred book,
andwith deep devotion on days of festival or mourning read
in the temples by the priests. Now, all their temples lay
opento the west, resting upon pillars, that the breeze from
theSea might enter them, and they lay open on pillars to
theeast that the breezes of the Sea might not be hindered
but pass onward wherever the Sea list. And this is the
legendthey had of the sea, whom none in the Inner Lands had
ever beholden. They say that the Sea is a river heading
towardsHercules, and they say that he touches against the
edge of the world, and thatPoltarnees looks upon him. They
saythat all the worlds of heaven go bobbing on this river
andare swept down with the stream, and that Infinity is
thickand furry with forests through which the river in his
course sweeps on with all the worlds of heaven. Among the
colossaltrunks of those dark trees, the smallest fronds of
whose branches are many nights, there walk the gods. And
wheneverits thirst, glowing in space like a great sun,
comesupon the beast, the tiger of the gods creeps down to
the river to drink. And the tiger of the gods his fill
loudly, whelming worlds the while, and the level of the
riversinks between its banks ere the beast's thirst is
quenched and ceases to glow like a sun. And many worlds