“All these souls of cities that were dead spoke that night on the
mountain to my city and soothed her, until at last she muttered of war
no longer, and her eyes stared wildly no more, but she hid her face in
her hands and for some while wept softly. At last she arose, and,
walking slowly and with bended head, and leaning upon Ilion and
Carthage, went mournfully eastwards; and the dust of her highways
swirled behind her as she went, a ghostly dust that never turned to mud
in all that drenching rain. And so the souls of the cities led her away,
and gradually they disappeared from the mountain, and the ancient voices
died away in the distance.
“Never since then have I seen my city alive; but once I met with a
traveller who said that somewhere in the midst of a great desert are
gathered together the souls of all dead cities. He said that he was lost
once in a place where there was no water, and he heard their voices
speaking all the night.”
But I said: “I was once without water in a desert and heard a city
speaking to me, but knew not whether it really spoke or not, for on that
day I heard so many terrible things, and only some of them were true.”
And the man with the black hair said: “I believe it to be true, though
whither she went I know not. I only know that a shepherd found me in the
morning faint with hunger and cold, and carried me down here; and when I
came to Andelsprutz it was, as you have perceived it, dead.”
_Where the Tides Ebb and Flow_
I dreamt that I had done a horrible thing, so that burial was to be
denied me either in soil or sea, neither could there be any hell for me.
I waited for some hours, knowing this. Then my friends came for me, and
slew me secretly and with ancient rite, and lit great tapers, and
carried me away.
It was all in London that the thing was done, and they went furtively at
dead of night along grey streets and among mean houses until they came
to the river. And the river and the tide of the sea were grappling with
one another between the mud-banks, and both of them were black and full
of lights. A sudden wonder came into the eyes of each, as my friends
came near to them with their glaring tapers. All these things I saw as
they carried me dead and stiffening, for my soul was still among my
bones, because there was no hell for it, and because Christian burial
was denied me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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