"Lord Dunsany - Time And The Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

along the valleys, and fast at his heels followed
Umborodom. And the nearer the hound, the thunder, came to
the golden ball the louder did he bay, but haughty and
silent stood the mountains whose plot had darkened the
world. All in the dark among the crags in a mighty cavern,
guarded by two twin peaks, at last they found the golden
ball for which the Dawnchild wept. Then under the world
went Umborodom with his thunder panting behind him, and came
in the dark before the morning from underneath the world and
gave the Dawnchild back her golden ball. And Inzana laughed
and took it in her hands, and Umborodom went back into
Pegana, and at its threshold the thunder went to sleep.
Again the Dawnchild tossed the golden ball far up into
the blue across the sky, and the second morning shone upon
the world, on lakes and oceans, and on drops of dew. But as
the ball went bounding on its way, the prowling mists and
the rain conspired together and took it and wrapped it in
their tattered cloaks and carried it away. And through the
rents in their garments gleamed the golden ball, but they
held it fast and carried it right away and underneath the
world. Then on an onyx step Inzana sat down and wept, who
could no more be happy without her golden ball. And again
the gods were sorry, and the South Wind came to tell her
tales of most enchanted islands, to whom she listened not,
nor yet to the tales of temples in lone lands that the East
Wind told her, who had stood beside her when she flung her
golden ball. But from far away the West Wind came with news
of three grey travellers wrapt round with battered cloaks
that carried away between them a golden ball.
Then up leapt the North Wind, he who guards the pole, and
drew his sword of ice out of his scabbard of snow and sped
away along the road that leads across the blue. And in the
darkness underneath the world he met the three grey
travellers and rushed upon them and drove them far before
him, smiting them with his sword till their grey cloaks
streamed with blood. And out of the midst of them, as they
fled with flapping cloaks all red and grey and tattered, he
leapt up with the golden ball and gave it to the Dawnchild.
Again Inzana tossed the ball into the sky, making the
third day, and up and up it went and fell towards the
fields, and as Inzana stooped to pick it up she suddenly
heard the singing of all the birds that were. All the birds
in the world were singing all together and also all the
streams, and Inzana sat and listened and thought of no
golden ball, nor ever of chalcedony and onyx, nor of all her
fathers the gods, but only of all the birds. Then in the
woods and meadows where they had all suddenly sung, they
suddenly ceased. And Inzana, looking up, found that her
ball was lost, and all alone in the stillness one owl
laughed. When the gods heard Inzana crying for her ball