A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)Blackwood, Algernon
Science
A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)
Blackwood, Algernon
Magic -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
The Sweep, the Laugher and the Tramp,
The running man who lights the lamp,
The Woman of the Haystack, too,
The Gardener and Man of Dust
Are passengers because they must
Follow the Guard with eyes of blue.
Over the forests and into the Cave
That is the way we must all behave---
'Please, Daddy, will you move? It's dripping on to your boot.'
They all looked down; the milk had splashed from the cloth and fallen
upon the toe of his big mountain boots. It made a pretty, white star.
Riquette was daintily lapping it up with her long pink Tongue. Ray by
ray the star set in her mysterious interior.
'Riquette must come too,' said Rogers gravely. 'She's full of white
starlight now.'
And Jimbo left his chair and went seriously over to the book-shelf
above Mother's sofa-bed to arrange the signals. For between the
tightly-wedged books he had inserted all the available paper-knives
and book-markers he could find to represent railway-signals. They
stuck out at different angles. He altered several, putting some up,
some down, and some at right angles.
'The line's all clear for to-night,' he announced to Daddy with a
covert significance he hardly grasped himself, then coming back to
home-made jam and crusty village bread.
Jane Anne caught her father's answering glance-mysterious, full of
unguessed meanings. 'Oh, excuse me, Mother,' she said, feeling the
same thing in herself and a little frightened; 'but I do believe
they're conspiring, aren't they?'
And Mother gave a sudden start, whose cause she equally failed to
analyse. 'Hush, dear,' she said. 'Don't criticise your elders, and
when you do, don't use long words you cannot possibly understand.'
And everybody understood something none of them understood-while tea
went on as usual to the chatter of daily details of external life.
CHAPTER XXIV
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.
_Abt Vogler_, R. BROWNING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account