Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany 1915

Alone in Immortals

I heard it said that very far away from here, on the wrong

side of the deserts of Cathay and in a country dedicate to

winter, are all the years that are dead.  And there a

certain valley shuts them in and hides them, as rumor has

it, from the world, but not from the sight of the moon nor

from those that dream in his rays.

   And I said: I will go from here by ways of dream and I

will come to that valley and enter in and mourn there for

the good years that are dead.  And I said: I will take a

wreath, a wreath of mourning, and lay it at their feet in

token of my sorrow for their dooms.

   And when I sought about among the flowers, among the

flowers for my wreath of mourning, the lily looked too large

and the laurel looked too solemn and I found nothing frail

enough nor slender to serve as an offering to the years that

were dead.  And at last I made a slender wreath of daisies

in the manner that I had seen them made in one of the years

that is dead.

   "This," said I, "is scarce less fragile or less frail

than one of those delicate forgotten years."  Then I took my

wreath in my hand and went from here.  And when I had come

by paths of mystery to that romantic land, where the valley

that rumour told of lies close to the mountainous moon, I

searched among the grass for those poor slight years for

whom I bought my sorrow and my wreath.  And when I found

there nothing in the grass I said: "Time has shattered them

and swept them away and left not even any faint remains."

   But looking upwards in the blaze of the moon I suddenly

saw colossi sitting near, and towering up and blotting out

the stars and filling the night with blackness; and at those

idols' feet I saw praying and making obeisance kings and the

days that are and all times and all cities and all nations

and all their gods.  Neither the smoke of incense nor of the

sacrifice burning reached those colossal heads, they sat

there not to be measured, not to be overthrown, not to be

worn away.

   I said: "Who are those?"

   One answered: "Alone the Immortals."

   And I said sadly: "I came not to see dread gods, but I

came to shed my tears and to offer flowers at the feet of

certain little years that are dead and may not come again."

   He answered me: "These ARE the years that are dead, alone

the immortals; all years to be are Their children -- They

fashioned their smiles and their laughter; all earthly kings

They have crowned, all gods They have created; all the

events to be flow down from their feet like a river, the

worlds are flying pebbles that They have already thrown, and

Time and all his centuries behind him kneel there with

bended crests in token of vassalage at Their potent feet."

   And when I heard this I turned away with my wreath, and

went back to my own land comforted.