A Dreamer's Tales

by Lord Dunsany

  THE DAY OF THE POLL

  In the town by the sea it was the day of the poll, and the poet regardedit sadly when he woke and saw the light of it coming in at his windowbetween two small curtains of gauze. And the day of the poll wasbeautifully bright; stray bird-songs came to the poet at the window; theair was crisp and wintry, but it was the blaze of sunlight that haddeceived the birds. He heard the sound of the sea that the moon led up theshore, dragging the months away over the pebbles and shingles and pilingthem up with the years where the worn-out centuries lay; he saw themajestic downs stand facing mightily south-wards; saw the smoke of thetown float up to their heavenly faces--column after column rose calmlyinto the morning as house by house was waked by peering shafts of thesunlight and lit its fires for the day; column by column went up towardthe serene downs' faces, and failed before they came there and hung allwhite over houses; and every one in the town was raving mad.

  It was a strange thing that the poet did, for he hired the largest motorin the town and covered it with all the flags he could find, and set outto save an intelligence. And he presently found a man whose face was hot,who shouted that the time was not far distant when a candidate, whom henamed, would be returned at the head of the poll by a thumping majority.And by him the poet stopped and offered him a seat in the motor that wascovered with flags. When the man saw the flags that were on the motor, andthat it was the largest in the town, he got in. He said that his voteshould be given for that fiscal system that had made us what we are, inorder that the poor man's food should not be taxed to make the rich manricher. Or else it was that he would give his vote for that system oftariff reform which should unite us closer to our colonies with ties thatshould long endure, and give employment to all. But it was not to thepolling-booth that the motor went, it passed it and left the town and cameby a small white winding road to the very top of the downs. There the poetdismissed the car and let that wondering voter on to the grass and seatedhimself on a rug. And for long the voter talked of those imperialtraditions that our forefathers had made for us and which he should upholdwith his vote, or else it was of a people oppressed by a feudal systemthat was out of date and effete, and that should be ended or mended. Butthe poet pointed out to him small, distant, wandering ships on the sunlitstrip of sea, and the birds far down below them, and the houses below thebirds, with the little columns of smoke that could not find the downs.

  And at first the voter cried for his polling-booth like a child; but aftera while he grew calmer, save when faint bursts of cheering came twitteringup to the downs, when the voter would cry out bitterly against themisgovernment of the Radical party, or else it was--I forget what the poettold me--he extolled its splendid record.

  "See," said the poet, "these ancient beautiful things, the downs and theold-time houses and the morning, and the grey sea in the sunlight goingmumbling round the world. And this is the place they have chosen to go manin!"

  And standing there with all broad England behind him, rolling northward,down after down, and before him the glittering sea too far for the soundof the roar of it, there seemed to the voter to grow less important thequestions that troubled the town. Yet he was still angry.

  "Why did you bring me here?" he said again.

  "Because I grew lonely," said the poet, "when all the town went mad."

  Then he pointed out to the voter some old bent thorns, and showed him theway that a wind had blown for a million years, coming up at dawn from thesea; and he told him of the storms that visit the ships, and their namesand whence they come, and the currents they drive afield, and the way thatthe swallows go. And he spoke of the down where they sat, when the summercame, and the flowers that were not yet, and the different butterflies,and about the bats and the swifts, and the thoughts in the heart of man.He spoke of the aged windmill that stood on the down, and of how tochildren it seemed a strange old man who was only dead by day. And as hespoke, and as the sea-wind blew on that high and lonely place, there beganto slip away from the voter's mind meaningless phrases that had crowded itlong--thumping majority--victory in the fight--terminologicalinexactitudes--and the smell of paraffin lamps dangling in heatedschoolrooms, and quotations taken from ancient speeches because the wordswere long. They fell away, though slowly, and slowly the voter saw a widerworld and the wonder of the sea. And the afternoon wore on, and the winterevening came, and the night fell, and all black grew the sea, and aboutthe time that the stars come blinking out to look upon our littleness, thepolling-booth closed in the town.

  When they got back the turmoil was on the wane in the streets; night hidthe glare of the posters; and the tide, finding the noise abated and beingat the flow, told an old tale that he had learned in his youth about thedeeps of the sea, the same which he had told to coastwise ships thatbrought it to Babylon by the way of Euphrates before the doom of Troy.

  I blame my friend the poet, however lonely he was, for preventing this manfrom registering his vote (the duty of every citizen); but perhaps itmatters less, as it was a foregone conclusion, because the losingcandidate, either through poverty or sheer madness, had neglected tosubscribe to a single football club.

  THE UNHAPPY BODY

  "Why do you not dance with us and rejoice with us?" they said to a certainbody. And then that body made the confession of its trouble. It said: "Iam united with a fierce and violent soul, that is altogether tyrannous andwill not let me rest, and he drags me away from the dances of my kin tomake me toil at his detestable work; and he will not let me do the littlethings, that would give pleasure to the folk I love, but only cares toplease posterity when he has done with me and left me to the worms; andall the while he makes absurd demands of affection from those that arenear to me, and is too proud even to notice any less than he demands, sothat those that should be kind to me all hate me." And the unhappy bodyburst into tears.

  And they said: "No sensible body cares for its soul. A soul is a littlething, and should not rule a body. You should drink and smoke more till heceases to trouble you." But the body only wept, and said, "Mine is afearful soul. I have driven him away for a little while with drink. But hewill soon come back. Oh, he will soon come back!"

  And the body went to bed hoping to rest, for it was drowsy with drink. Butjust as sleep was near it, it looked up, and there was its soul sitting onthe windowsill, a misty blaze of light, and looking into the river.

  "Come," said the tyrannous soul, "and look into the street."

  "I have need of sleep," said the body.

  "But the street is a beautiful thing," the soul said vehemently; "ahundred of the people are dreaming there."

  "I am ill through want of rest," the body said.

  "That does not matter," the soul said to it. "There are millions like youin the earth, and millions more to go there. The people's dreams arewandering afield; they pass the seas and mountains of faery, threading theintricate passes led by their souls; they come to golden temples a-ringwith a thousand bells; they pass up steep streets lit by paper lanterns,where the doors are green and small; they know their way to witches'chambers and castles of enchantment; they know the spell that brings themto the causeway along the ivory mountains--on one side looking downwardthey behold the fields of their youth and on the other lie the radiantplains of the future. Arise and write down what the people dream."

  "What reward is there for me," said the body, "if I write down what youbid me?"

  "There is no reward," said the soul.

  "Then I shall sleep," said the body.

  And the soul began to hum an idle song sung by a young man in a fabulousland as he passed a golden city (where fiery sentinels stood), and knewthat his wife was within it, though as yet but a little child, and knew byprophecy that furious wars, not yet arisen in far and unknown mountains,should roll above him with their dust and thirst before he ever came tothat city again--the young man sang it as he passed the gate, and was nowdead with his wife a thousand years.

  "I cannot sleep for that abominable song," the body cried to th
e soul.

  "Then do as you are commanded," the soul replied. And wearily the bodytook a pen again. Then the soul spoke merrily as he looked through thewindow. "There is a mountain lifting sheer above London, part crystal andpart myst. Thither the dreamers go when the sound of the traffic hasfallen. At first they scarcely dream because of the roar of it, but beforemidnight it stops, and turns, and ebbs with all its wrecks. Then thedreamers arise and scale the shimmering mountain, and at its summit findthe galleons of dream. Thence some sail East, some West, some into thePast and some into the Future, for the galleons sail over the years aswell as over the spaces, but mostly they head for the Past and the oldenharbours, for thither the sighs of men are mostly turned, and thedream-ships go before them, as the merchantmen before the continualtrade-winds go down the African coast. I see the galleons even now raiseanchor after anchor; the stars flash by them; they slip out of the night;their prows go gleaming into the twilight of memory, and night soon liesfar off, a black cloud hanging low, and faintly spangled with stars, likethe harbour and shore of some low-lying land seen afar with its harbourlights."

  Dream after dream that soul related as he sat there by the window. He toldof tropical forests seen by unhappy men who could not escape from London,and never would--forests made suddenly wondrous by the song of somepassing bird flying to unknown eyries and singing an unknown song. He sawthe old men lightly dancing to the tune of elfin pipes--beautiful danceswith fantastic maidens--all night on moonlit imaginary mountains; he heardfar off the music of glittering Springs; he saw the fairness of blossomsof apple and may thirty years fallen; he heard old voices--old tears cameglistening back; Romance sat cloaked and crowned upon southern hills, andthe soul knew him.

  One by one he told the dreams of all that slept in that street. Sometimeshe stopped to revile the body because it worked badly and slowly. Itschill fingers wrote as fast as they could, but the soul cared not forthat. And so the night wore on till the soul heard tinkling in Orientalskies far footfalls of the morning.

  "See now," said the soul, "the dawn that the dreamers dread. The sails oflight are paling on those unwreckable galleons; the mariners that steerthem slip back into fable and myth; that other sea the traffic is turningnow at its ebb, and is about to hide its pallid wrecks, and to comeswinging back, with its tumult, at the flow. Already the sunlight flashesin the gulfs behind the east of the world; the gods have seen it fromtheir palace of twilight that the built above the sunrise; they warm theirhands at its glow as it streams through their gleaming arches, before itreaches the world; all the gods are there that have ever been, and all thegods that shall be; they sit there in the morning, chanting and praisingMan."

  "I am numb and very cold for want of sleep," said the body.

  "You shall have centuries of sleep," said the soul, "but you must notsleep now, for I have seen deep meadows with purple flowers flaming talland strange above the brilliant grass, and herds of pure white unicornsthat gambol there for joy, and a river running by with a glitteringgalleon on it, all of gold, that goes from an unknown inland to an unknownisle of the sea to take a song from the King of Over-the-Hills to theQueen of Far-Away.

  "I will sing that song to you, and you shall write it down."

  "I have toiled for you for years," the body said. "Give me now but onenight's rest, for I am exceeding weary."

  "Oh, go and rest. I am tired of you. I am off," said the soul.

  And he arose and went, we know not whither. But the body they laid in theearth. And the next night at midnight the wraiths of the dead camedrifting from their tombs to felicitate that body.

  "You are free here, you know," they said to their new companion.

  "Now I can rest," said the body.

  FINIS