"Dunsany, Lord - Time and the Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Part II:
The Journey of the King












Preface to _Time and the Gods_



These tales are of the things that befel gods and men in
Yarnith, Averon, and Zarkandhu, and in the other countries
of my dreams.









Time and the Gods


Once when the gods were young and only Their swarthy servant
Time was without age, the gods lay sleeping by a broad river
upon earth. There in a valley that from all the earth the
gods had set apart for Their repose the gods dreamed marble
dreams. And with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose and
stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all
shimmering white to the morning. In the city's midst the
gleaming marble of a thousand steps climbed to the citadel
where arose four pinnacles beckoning to heaven, and midmost
between the pinnacles there stood the dome, vast, as the
gods had dreamed it. All around, terrace by terrace, there
went marble lawns well guarded by onyx lions and carved with
effigies of all the gods striding amid the symbols of the
worlds. With a sound like tinkling bells, far off in a land
of shepherds hidden by some hill, the waters of many
fountains turned again home. Then the gods awoke and there
stood Sardathrion. Not to common men have the gods given to