Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany 1915

The City

In time as well as space my fancy roams far from here.  It

led me once to the edge of certain cliffs that were low and

red and rose up out of a desert: a little way off in the

desert there was a city.  It was evening, and I sat and

watched the city.

   Presently I saw men by threes and fours come softly

stealing out of that city's gate to the number of about

twenty.  I heard the hum of men's voices speaking at

evening.

   "It is well they are gone," they said.  "It is well they

are gone.  We can do business now.  It is well they are

gone."  And the men that had left the city sped away over

the sand and so passed into the twilight.

   "Who are these men?" I said to my glittering leader.

   "The poets," my fancy answered.  "The poets and artists."

   "Why do they steal away?" I said to him.  "And why are

the people glad that they have gone?"

   He said: "It must be some doom that is going to fall on

the city, something has warned them and they have stolen

away.  Nothing may warn the people."

   I heard the wrangling voices, glad with commerce, rise up

from the city.  And then I also departed, for there was an

ominous look on the face of the sky.

   And only a thousand years later I passed that way, and

there was nothing, even among the weeds, of what had been

that city.