"Lord Dunsany - Where The Tides Ebb And Flow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

but there were no tears in my dead eyes. And I knew then
that the river might have cared for us, might have caressed
us, might have sung to us, but he swept broadly onwards,
thinking of nothing but the princely ships.
At last the tide did what the river would not, and came
and covered me over, and my soul had rest in the green
water, and rejoiced and believed that it had the Burial of
the Sea. But with the ebb the water fell again, and left me
alone again with the callous mud among the forgotten things
that drift no more, and with the sight of all those desolate
houses, and with the knowledge among all of us that each was
dead.
In the mournful wall behind me, hung with green weeds,
forsaken of the sea, dark tunnels appeared, and secret
narrow passages that were clamped and barred. From these at
last the stealthy rats came down to nibble me away, and my
soul rejoiced thereat and believed that he would be free
perforce from the accursed bones to which burial was
refused. Very soon the rats ran away a little space and
whispered among themselves. They never came any more. When
I found that I was accursed even among the rats I tried to
weep again.
Then the tide came swinging back and covered the dreadful
mud, and hid the desolate houses, and soothed the forgotten
things, and my soul had ease for a while in the sepulture of
the sea. And then the tide forsook me again.
To and fro it came about me for many years. Then the
County Council found me, and gave me decent burial. It was
the first grave that I had ever slept in. That very night
my friends came for me. They dug me up and put me back
again in the shallow hole in the mud.
Again and again through the years my bones found burial,
but always behind the funeral lurked one of those terrible
men who, as soon as night fell, came and dug them up and
carried them back again to the hole in the mud.
And then one day the last of those men died who once had
done to me this terrible thing. I heard his soul go over
the river at sunset.
And again I hoped.
A few weeks afterwards I was found once more, and once
more taken out of that restless place and given deep burial
in sacred ground, where my soul hoped that it should rest.
Almost at once men came with cloaks and tapers to give me
back to the mud, for the thing had become a tradition and a
rite. And all the forsaken things mocked me in their dumb
hearts when they saw me carried back, for they were jealous
of me because I had left the mud. It must be remembered
that I could not weep.
And the years went by seawards where the black barges go,
and the great derelict centuries became lost at sea, and