Mar
13
Tagged!
Filed Under Books, Odds and ends
Meme Rules:
- Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
- Open the book to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the next ten sentences.
- Tag another person.
Okay… here we go:
And one turned towards the smoke-stained houses, saying, “Blessed be the houses, because men dream therein.”
Then I perceived, what I had never thought, that all these staring houses were not alike, but different one from another, because they held different dreams.
And another one turned to a tree that stood by the Green Park railings, saying, “Take comfort, tree, for the fields will come again”.
And all the while the ugly smoke went upwards, the smoke that has stifled Romance and blackened the birds. This, I thought, they can never praise nor bless. And when they saw it they raised their hands towards it, towards the thousand chimneys, saying, “Behold the smoke. The old coal-forests that have lain so long in the dark, and so long still, are dancing now and going back to the sun.”
It had rained, and a cheerless stream dropped down a dirty gutter. It had come from heaps of refuse, foul and forgotten; it had gathered upon its way things that were derelict, and went to somber drains unknown to man or the sun. It was this sullen stream as much as all other causes that had made me say in my heart that the town was vile, that Beauty was dead in it, and Romance fled — even this thing they blessed.
Lord Dunsany, A Dreamer’s Tales - The Beggars