"Лорд Дансени. The Lost Silk Hat (Потерянная шелковая шляпа) (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

family of noisy, pimply children like everyone else,
and Romance will be dead. No, don't ring that bell.
Go and buy a bayonet, or whatever one does buy, and
join the Bosnians.
:
I tell you I can't without a hat.
:
What is a hat? Will you sacrifice for it a beautiful
doom? Think of your bones, lying neglected and
forgotten, lying forlornly because of hopeless love on
endless golden sands. "Lying forlorn!" as Keats said.
What a word! Forlorn in Africa. The careless Bedouins
going past by day, at night the lion's roar, the
grievous voice of the desert.
:
As a matter of fact, I don't think you're right in
speaking of it as desert. The Bosnians, I believe, are
only taking it because it is supposed to be the most
fertile land in the world.
:
What of that? You will not be remembered by geography
and statistics, but by golden-mouthed Romance. And
that is how Romance sees Africa.
:
Well, I'm going to get my hat.
:
Think! Think! If you enter by that door you will
never fall among the foremost Bosnians. You will never
die in a far-off, lonely land to lie by immense
Sahara. And she will never weep for your beautiful
doom and call herself cruel in vain.
:
Hark! She is playing the piano. It seems to me that
she might be unhappy about it for years. I don't see
much good in that.
:
No. *I* will comfort her.
:
I'm damned if you do! Look here! I don't mind saying,
I'm damned if you do.
:
Calm yourself. Calm yourself. I do not mean in that
way.
:
Then what on earth do you mean?
:
I will make songs about your beautiful death, glad
songs and sad songs. They shall be glad because they
tell again the noble traditions of the troubadours, and
sad because they tell of your sorrowful destiny and