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

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
walk Sardathrion's streets, and not to common eyes to see
her fountains. Only to those to whom in lonely passes in
the night the gods have spoken, leaning through the stars,
to those that have heard the voices of the gods above the
morning or seen Their faces bending above the sea, only to
those hath it been given to see Sardathrion, to stand where
her pinnacles gathered together in the night fresh from the
dreams of gods. For round the valley a great desert lies
through which no common traveller may come, but those whom
the gods have chosen feel suddenly a great longing at heart,
and crossing the mountains that divide the desert from the
world, set out across it driven by the gods, till hidden in
the desert's midst they find the valley at last and look
with eyes upon Sardathrion.
In the desert beyond the valley grow a myriad thorns, and
all pointing towards Sardathrion. So may many that the gods
have loved come to the marble city, but none can return, for
other cities are no fitting home for men whose feet have
touched Sardathrion's marble streets, where even the gods
have not been ashamed to come in the guise of men with Their
cloaks wrapped about their faces. Therefore no city shall
ever hear the songs that are sung in the marble citadel by
those in whose ears have rung the voices of the gods. No
report shall ever come to other lands of the music of the
fall of Sardathrion's fountains, when the waters which went
heavenward return again into the lake where the gods cool
Their brows sometimes in the guise of men. None may ever
hear the speech of the poets of that city, to whom the gods
have spoken.