Tales of Three Hemispheres eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 94 pages of information about Tales of Three Hemispheres.

Tales of Three Hemispheres eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 94 pages of information about Tales of Three Hemispheres.

Much I should have wished to stay and hear the hymn with which they greet the night, that is answered by the wolves on the heights of Mloon, but it was now time to raise the anchor again that the captain might return from Bar-Wul-Yann upon the landward tide.  So we went on board and continued down the Yann.  And the captain and I spoke little, for we were thinking of our parting, which should be for long, and we watched instead the splendour of the westerning sun.  For the sun was a ruddy gold, but a faint mist cloaked the jungle, lying low, and into it poured the smoke of the little jungle cities, and the smoke of them met together in the mist and joined into one haze, which became purple, and was lit by the sun, as the thoughts of men become hallowed by some great and sacred thing.  Sometimes one column from a lonely house would rise up higher than the cities’ smoke, and gleam by itself in the sun.

And now as the sun’s last rays were nearly level, we saw the sight that I had come to see, for from two mountains that stood on either shore two cliffs of pink marble came out into the river, all glowing in the light of the low sun, and they were quite smooth and of mountainous altitude, and they nearly met, and Yann went tumbling between them and found the sea.

And this was Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann, and in the distance through that barrier’s gap I saw the azure indescribable sea, where little fishing-boats went gleaming by.

And the sunset and the brief twilight came, and the exultation of the glory of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed, the fairest marvel that the eye beheld-and this in a land of wonders.  And soon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and the colours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away.  And the sight of those cliffs was to me as some chord of music that a master’s hand had launched from the violin, and which carries to Heaven of Faery the tremulous spirits of men.

And now by the shore they anchored and went no farther, for they were sailors of the river and not of the sea, and knew the Yann but not the tides beyond.

And the time was come when the captain and I must part, he to go back again to his fair Belzoond in sight of the distant peaks of the Hian Min, and I to find my way by strange means back to those hazy fields that all poets know, wherein stand small mysterious cottages through whose windows, looking westwards, you may see the fields of men, and looking eastwards see glittering elfin mountains, tipped with snow, going range on range into the region of Myth, and beyond it into the kingdom of Fantasy, which pertain to the Lands of Dream.  Long we should meet no more, for my fancy is weakening as the years slip by, and I go ever more seldom into the Lands of Dream.  Then we clasped hands, uncouthly on his part, for it is not the method of greeting in his country, and he commended my soul to the care of his own gods, to his little lesser gods, the humble ones, to the gods that bless Belzoond.

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Tales of Three Hemispheres from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.