"Goudge, Elizabeth - Eliots of Damerosehay 01 - The Bird in the Tree 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goudge Elizabeth)

ISBN 0-515-02998-X

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THE BIRD

I have grown tired of sorrow and human tears; Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

I have grown tired of rapture and love's desire;
Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire
Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.

I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood; Here between sea and sea in the fairy wood, I have found a delicate wave-green solitude.

Here, in the fairy wood, between sea and sea, I have heard the song of a fairy bird in a tree, And the peace that is not in the world has flown to me.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

THE TREE

My life is a tree, Yoke-fellow of the earth; Pledged,
By roots too deep for remembrance, To stand hard against the storm,

To fill my place. (But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing: Wind-free are the wings of my bird; she hath built no mortal nest. )

KARLE WILSON BAKER.

CHAPTER ONE

1.

Visitors to Damerosehay, had they but known it, could have told just how much the children liked them by the particular spot at winch they were met upon arrival. If the visitor was definitely disliked the children paid no attention to him until Ellen had forcibly thrust them into their best clothes and pushed them through the drawing-room door about the hour of five, when they extended limp paws in salutation, replied in polite monosyllables to enquiries as to their well-being, and then stood in a depressed row staring at the carpet, beautiful to behold but no more alive than three Delia Robbia cherubs modeled out of plaster. If, on the other hand, they tolerated the visitor, they would go so far as to meet him at the front door and ask if he had brought them anything. If they liked him they would go to the gate at the end of the wood and wave encouragingly as he came towards them. But if they loved him, if he was one of the inner circle, they would go right through the village, taking the dogs with them, and along the coast road to the corner by the cornfield, and when they saw the beloved approaching they would yell like all the fiends of hell let loose for the afternoon.

Their cousin David belonged to this inner circle, and David would be here at five o'clock. It was half past four now. If they hurried they would reach the corner by the cornfield just as his car came jolting down the rutted lane from the main road. Madly they dashed down the back stairs from the nursery, raced into the kitchen to fetch the dogs, Pooh-Bah and the Bastard, and dashed out again into the hall and through the porch into the long drive that led down through the oak wood to the road. Every family has its particular bright stars, and David and Grandmother were the particular stars of the Eliot family, people in whose presence life was more worth living, people who warmed you, like the sun, and lit the whole world to a richer glory. Grandmother was always with them, the center of their life, but David only came on visits. He was like a meteor in the sky, or a rainbow, something that shone for a brief exciting moment and then was gone. They had to make the most of him, and for this reason it was important that they should not be a moment late at the cornfield.