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

hope upon the forsaken mud. Gradually the horrible houses
crumbled, until the poor dead things that never had had life
got decent burial among the weeds and moss. At last the may
appeared and the convolvulus. Finally, the wild rose stood
up over mounds that had been wharves and warehouses. Then I
knew that the cause of Nature had triumphed, and London had
passed away.
The last man in London came to the wall by the river, in
an ancient cloak that was one of those that once my friends
had worn, and peered over the edge to see that I still was
there. Then he went, and I never saw men again: they had
passed away with London.
A few days after the last man had gone the birds came
into London, all the birds that sing. When they first saw
me they all looked sideways at me, then they went away a
little and spoke among themselves.
"He only sinned against Man," they said; "it is not our
quarrel."
"Let us be kind to him," they said.
Then they hopped nearer me and began to sing. It was the
time of the rising of the dawn, and from both banks of the
river, and from the sky, and from the thickets that were
once the streets, hundreds of birds were singing. As the
light increased the birds sang more and more; they grew
thicker and thicker in the air above my head, till there
were thousands of them singing there, and then millions, and
at last I could see nothing but a host of flickering wings
with the sunlight on them, and little gaps of sky. Then
when there was nothing to be heard in London but the myriad
notes of that exultant song, my soul rose up from the bones
in the hole in the mud and began to climb up the song
heavenwards. And it seemed that a laneway opened amongst
the wings of the birds, and it went up and up, and one of
the smaller gates of Paradise stood ajar at the end of it.
And then I knew by a sign that the mud should receive me no
more, for suddenly I found that I could weep.
 At this moment I opened my eyes in bed in a house in
London, and outside some sparrows were twittering in a tree
in the light of the radiant morning; and there were tears
still wet upon my face, for one's restraint is feeble while
one sleeps. But I arose and opened the window wide, and,
stretching my hands out over the little garden, I blessed
the birds whose song had woken me up from the troubled and
terrible centuries of my dream.