POLTARNEES, BEHOLDER OF OCEAN Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the east there lies a desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the... more...

Being convinced that his end was nearly come, and having lived long on earth (and all those years in Spain, in the golden time), the Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez, whose heights see not Valladolid, called for his eldest son. And so he addressed him when he was come to his chamber, dim with its strange red hangings and august with the splendour of Spain: "O eldest son of mine, your younger brother being dull and clever, on whom those... more...

CHARON Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with his weariness. It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of wide floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that had become for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and was of a piece with Eternity. If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have divided all time in his memory into two equal slabs. So grey were all things... more...

ACT I SCENE 1 A small railway station near London. Time: Ten years ago. BERT 'Ow goes it, Bill? BILL Goes it? 'Ow d'yer think it goes? BERT I don't know, Bill. 'Ow is it? BILL Bloody. BERT Why? What's wrong? BILL Wrong? Nothing ain't wrong. BERT What's up then? BILL Nothing ain't right. BERT Why, wot's the worry? BILL Wot's the worry? They don't give you better wages nor a dog, and then they thinks they... more...

Act I Time: About the time of the decadence in Babylon. Scene: The jungle city of Thek in the reign of King Karnos. Tharmia: You know that my lineage is almost divine. Arolind: My father's sword was so terrible that he had to hide it with a cloak. Tharmia: He probably did that because there were no jewels in the scabbard. Arolind: There were emeralds in it that outstared the sea. * * * * * * * * Tharmia: Now I must leave you here and... more...

PREFACE Believing plays to be solely for the stage, I have never before allowed any of mine to be printed until they had first faced from a stage the judgment of an audience, to see if they were entitled to be called plays at all. A successful production also has been sometimes a moral support to me when some critic has said, as for instance of "A Night at an Inn," that though it reads passably it could never act. But in this book I have made... more...

INTRODUCTION I Lady Wilde once told me that when she was a young girl she was stopped in some Dublin street by a great crowd and turned into a shop to escape from it. She stayed there some time and the crowd still passed. She asked the shopman what it was, and he said, 'the funeral of Thomas Davis, a poet.' She had never heard of Davis; but because she thought a country that so honoured a poet must be worth something, she became interested in... more...

THE LAST DREAM OF BWONA KHUBLA From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchids blow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and fireflies glide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers went three days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plains where the oryx are. And glad they were when they came to the water-hole, where only one white man had gone before, which the natives know as... more...

A Tale of London "Come," said the Sultan to his hasheesh-eater in the very furthest lands that know Bagdad, "dream to me now of London." And the hasheesh-eater made a low obeisance and seated himself cross-legged upon a purple cushion broidered with golden poppies, on the floor, beside an ivory bowl where the hasheesh was, and having eaten liberally of the hasheesh blinked seven times and spoke thus: "O Friend of God, know then that London is... more...

In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the years of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took with him too that clarion of the centaurs,... more...