“You
shall have centuries of sleep,” said the soul, “but you must not sleep
now, for I have seen deep meadows with purple flowers flaming tall and
strange above the brilliant grass, and herds of pure white unicorns that
gambol there for joy, and a river running by with a glittering galleon
on it, all of gold, that goes from an unknown inland to an unknown isle
of the sea to take a song from the King of Over-the-Hills to the Queen
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 one night’s rest, for I am exceeding weary.”
I
can imagine the muse beckoning to Lord Dunsany over the years,
demanding he pen more and more tales of fantasy and the fantastic. The
author surely infused his own experience into this delightful
short-short story, The Unhappy Body, that's included in his much anthologized collection, A Dreamer's Tales.
A Dreamer's Tales can be read online via this link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57277...
Anglo-Irish author Lord Dunsany, 1878-1957
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