Lord Dunsany

“ Queen: Oozizi, when I hear the sound of all their feet it is dreadful, and I must fly. And when I see the wonderful fields in the sunlight sloping away to lands I have never known, then I long to fly away and away for ever, passing from field to field and land to land.
Oozizi: Lady, no, no!
Queen: Oozizi.
Oozizi: Yes, great lady.
Queen: There is a mountain there that towers above the earth. It goes up into a calm of which our world knows nothing. Heaven, like a cloak, is draped about its shoulders. Why have none told me of this mountain, Oozizi? ”

“ Hippanthigh: I felt it to be my duty, Mr. Sladder.
Sladder: Yes, quite so. Exactly. Well, it seems I'm a thoroughly bad old man, only fit to rob the poor, an out-and-out old ruffian.
Hippanthigh: I never said that.
Sladder: No. But you made me feel it. I never felt so bad about myself before, not as bad as that. But you, Mr. Hippanthigh, you were the high-falutin' angel with a new brass halo, out on its bank holiday. Now, how would clandestine love-making strike you, Mr. Hippanthigh? Would that be all right to your way of thinking?
Hippanthigh: Clandestine, Mr. Sladder? ”

“ Hippanthigh stands silent and mournful.
Sladder: My child, I had foolish ideas for you once, but now I say that you are to marry a man, not a wretched, miserable little curate, who will be a wretched, miserable little curate all his life.
Ermyntrude: Father, I will not hear such words.
Sladder: I've given him every chance. I've given him more than every chance, but he prefers the bottom rung of the ladder; there we will leave him.
Ermyntrude: O, father! How can you be so cruel?
Sladder: It's not my fault, and it's not the bishop's fault. It's his own silly pig-headedness. ”

“ On the snow on the pinnacle of Aether Mountain, with only bright blue sky all round and everywhere, recline Queen Zoomzoomarma and the Prince of Zoon.
The Queen: You had known no love before, First of a Hundred?
Prince of Zoon: There is no love on earth, O Queen of all.
Queen: Only here.
Zoon: Pure love is only here on this peak lonely in heaven.
Queen: Would you love me elsewhere if we went from here?
Zoon: But we will never go from here.
Queen: No, we will never leave it.
Zoon: Lady, look down. (She looks.) The earth is sorrowful. (She sighs.) Cares. Cares. ”

“ Queen: It is true.
Zoon: On this clear peak that just enters Heaven love is and only here. The rest is dreams.
Queen: Could we awake from love and find Earth true?
Zoon: No, no, no. Sweet Lady, let not such fancies alarm you.
Queen: And yet folks wake from dreams. It would be terrible.
Zoon: No, no, there are things too real for dreams. You cannot waken from love. Dreams are of fantastic things, things fanciful and weak, and things confused and intricate like Earth. When you think of them in your dreams you see their unreality. But if love were not real what could there be to wake to. ”

“ Sigh not for Earth, oh lady, sigh not for Earth.
Queen: Why not, King of Aether Mountain?
Zoon: Because when you sigh for tiny things I tremble for your love. See how faint and small it is and how far away.
Queen: I do not sigh for Earth, King of the Mountain. I only wish it well.
Zoon: Oh, wish it not well, lady.
Queen: Let us wish the poor Earth well.
Zoon: No, lady, no. Be with me always wholly, living not partly in dreams. There is no Earth. It is but a dream that left us. See, see (pointing down) it is a dim dream.
Queen (looking down) : The people move there still. ”

“ Master, the workers were angry. Be warned, Master, because you and I went together once to the hoard beyond the marshes. Be warned. They were angry, Master.
Zoon: I care not for the workers.
Oomuz: Master, be warned. It was long ago and they say they were very angry.
Zoon: I care not, Oomuz. I come not boasting back from the hills under Aether Mountain. I shall not halt till I have told the Queen my love. I shall wed with her who is less only than Fate, if less she be. I am not as those, Oomuz. Who weds the Queen is more than the servant of Fate. ”

“ The impassive Nubian stands motionless near the King, holding up the cups on a tray.
King: The Emperor has honoured me with these two cups of wine that I may drink one of them to the grandeur of his throne. I bid you importune the gods that they may surely tell me which it were well to drink.
First Priest: We will importune the gods with the savour of rarest spices. We will send up to them the odour of herbs they love. We will commune with them in silence and they shall answer our thoughts, when they snuff the savour of the smoke of the burning on the tripod that is sacred to the Sun. ”

“ Ermyntrude: O, father, he's young.
Sladder: Dear me, you don't say so. Dear me, you do surprise me. Well, well, well, well. We do live and learn. Don't we? And what might his name be now?
Ermyntrude: It's Mr. Hippanthigh, father.
Sladder: O-o-o! It's Mr. Hippanthigh, is it? O-ho, O-ho! (He touches a movable bell, shouting "Splurge!" To his daughter or rather to himself.) We'll see Mr. Hippanthigh.
Ermyntrude: What are you going to do, father?
Sladder: We'll see Mr. Hippanthigh. (Enter Splurge.) Splurge, run after Mr. Hippanthigh and bring him back. Say I've got something to say to him. ”

“ The acolytes are crouched upon the floor. He does not notice them since they ceased to moan.
The gods! With what dark and dreadful thing have they clouded the future?
Well, I will face it! But what is it? Is it one of those things a strong man can bear? Or is it——?
The future is more terrible than the grave, that has its one secret only.
No man, he said, could say that the gods had advised me ill when they bade me drink out of a poisoned cup.
What have the gods seen? What dreadful work have they overlooked where Destiny sits alone, making evil years? ”

“ They seem to wake as though young and strong out of sleep. There is a great commotion among them. The sentries outside are utterly unmoved. Oomuz, without sharing any of the excitement of the Princes, now nods his head solemnly as he had once shaken it.
Moomoomon: Love! It must have been that that I felt that day in the twilight as I came back round the peak of Zing-gee Mountain.
Ximenung: You felt it, Moomoomon? Tell us.
Moomoomon: All the air seemed gold, seemed gold of a sudden. Through it I saw fair fields, glittering green far down, glimpsed between clumps of the heather. ”

“ When the man whose cause it championed has been elected alderman, when the esplanade has been widened, or the town better lighted or drained, the allegory's work must necessarily be over; but the truth of all other works of art is manifold and should be eternal.
Though there is no such land as the Golden Isles and was never any such king as Hamaran, yet all that we write with sincerity is true, for we can reflect nothing that we have not seen, and this we interpret with our idiosyncracies when we attempt any form of art. ”

“ Ermyntrude: I don't think he quarrels with him, father. I think he only insists that there can be no such thing as eternal punishment. I think that's rather nice of him.
Sladder: I don't care a damn about eternal punishment one way or the other. But a man who quarrels with the head of his firm's a fool. If his bishop's keen on hell, he should push hell for all it's worth.
Ermyntrude: Y-e-s, I suppose he should. But, father, aren't you glad that my mice have eaten the new cheese? I thought you'd be glad, father. ”

“ I would dance after her down the little street: the bright heels of my shoes would twinkle: my cloak would float out behind me: I would pursue her and call her name, beyond the street and over the moor as far as Aether Mountain: but I would not come up with her: that would be too daring.
Zoon: Love is not a toy, Prince Meliflor. Love is no less than a mood of Destiny.
Meliflor: Pooh! We must enjoy the idle hours that are for us alone.
Zoon: There will be no idle hours on Aether Mountain, following from crag to crag; if it be true that she would go that way. ”

“ Now, if Destiny calls you, let him call to you as to a Queen. Now, if it be for no whim of those that pass, that you would go so far from here to that great mountain, say, seated upon your throne in the golden palace with sceptre and orb in hand, say would you go forth, lady? ”

“ He clutches it and looks down into it.
How like to wine it is, which is full of dreams. It is silent and dreamy like the gods, whose dreams we are.
Only a moment in their deathless minds: then the dream passes. ”

“ Sladder: Are you aware, Mr. Hippanthigh, that you are making an attack upon business? I don't say that business is as pure as a surplice. But I do say that in business it is—as you may not understand—get on or go under; and without my business, or the business of the next man, who is doing his best to beat me, what would happen to trade? I don't know what's going to happen to England if you get rid of her trade, Mr. Hippanthigh.... Well?... When we're broke because we've been doing business with surplices on, what are the other countries going to do, Mr. Hippanthigh? ”

“ Nor could there be any drama in a contest between the brutal Sladder and a Stage Curate; for the spark that we call humour, by whose light we see much of life, comes as it were of two flints, and not of a flint and cheese. ”

“ As he lifts his head and says these words, twilight gives place to broad daylight, merely as a hint that the author of the play may have been mistaken, and the whole thing may have been no more than a poet's dream. ”

“ Ermyntrude: O, thank you, father.
Sladder: And if he's no good (firmly) I'll protect my child from him.
Ermyntrude: But, father, I don't want to be protected.
Sladder: If a man's a man, he must be some good at something. Well, this man's chosen the clergyman job. I've nothing against the job, it's well enough paid at the top, but is this young man ever going to get there? Is he ever going to get off the bottom rung? How long has he been a curate?
Ermyntrude: Eight years, father.
Sladder: It's a long time.
Ermyntrude: But, father, he would get a vicarage if it wasn't for the bishop. ”

“ King: Risks are the duty of a king's tasters.
Ambassador: If they chanced to taste of the treasure of the Emperor's poisoners—well. But if they, or any man of common birth, were to taste of the wine that the Emperor sends only to kings, and even to kings but rarely, that were an affront to the Emperor's ancient wine that could not be permitted.
King: It is surely permitted that I send for my priests, who tell by divination, having burnt strange herbs to the gods that guard the Golden Isles. ”

“ I've made all the arrangements with the Press and the bill-posters, sir. I think we'll make a big thing of it, sir.
Sladder: Well, Splurge, nothing remains to be done now, except to make the Cheezo.
Splurge: How do you think of doing it, sir?
Sladder: Do you know how they kill pigs in Chicago? No, you've not travelled yet. Well, they get their pigs on a slide, one man cuts their throats as fast as they go by, another shaves their bristles, and so on, and so on; one man for each job, and all at it at once; they do it very expeditiously. ”

“ Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, I cannot alter my beliefs.
Sladder: Nobody asks you to. I only ask you to leave the bishop alone. He says one thing and you preach another whenever you get half a chance; it's enough to break up any firm.
Hippanthigh: Believing as I do that eternal punishment is incompatible with——
Sladder: Now, Mr. Hippanthigh, that's got to stop. I don't mind saying, now that I've given you What For, that you don't seem a bad young fellow: but my daughter's not going to marry on the bottom rung, and there's an end of that. ”

“ The Queen listens; all is silent; she looks outside.
Queen: I see the green fields gleaming. Strange flowers are standing among them, like princes I have not known.
Oozizi: Oh, lady, speak not of the bewildering fields. They are all enchanted with Summer, and they have maddened the Princes. It is dangerous to look at them, lady. ”

“ Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, many of my parishioners are acquainted with the thing that you sell as bread. (From the moment of Hippanthigh's entry till now Sladder, over-cheerful and anxious, has been struggling to do and say the right thing through all the complications of a visit; but now that the note of Business has been sounded he suddenly knows where he is and becomes alert and stern, and all there.)
Sladder: What? Virilo?
Hippanthigh: Yes. They pay more for it than they pay for bread, because they've been taught somehow, poor fools, that "they must have the best." ”

“ The admiration of men who care for poetry, and how many of them are there? There's a bigger demand for smoked glasses to look at eclipses of the sun. Why should Fame come to me? Haven't I given up my days for her? That is enough to keep her away. I am a poet; that is enough reason for her to slight me. Proud and aloof and cold as marble, what does Fame care for us? Yes, Dick is right. It's a poor game chasing illusions, hunting the intangible, pursuing dreams. Dreams? Why, we are ourselves dreams. ”

“ To us these things are more real than men, they outlive generations, they watch the passing of kingdoms: we go by them like dust; they are still there, unmoved, unsmiling.
Prattle: But, but, you can't think that you could see Fame, you don't expect to see it?
de Reves: Not to me. Never to me. She of the golden trumpet and Greek dress will never appear to me.... We all have our dreams.
Prattle: I say—what have you been doing all day?
de Reves: I? Oh, only writing a sonnet. ”