The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany

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Title: Tales of Wonder

Author: Lord Dunsany

Release Date: October 21, 2004 [EBook #13821]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF WONDER ***

Produced by Tom Harris

TALES OF WONDER

by Lord Dunsany

Preface

Ebrington Barracks

Aug. 16th 1916.

I do not know where I may be when this preface is read. As I write it
in August 1916, I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, recovering
from a slight wound. But it does not greatly matter where I am; my
dreams are here before you amongst the following pages; and writing in
a day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the only
things that survive.

Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, and
nothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is only
for a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, all
the more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers will
bloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter in
shell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home to
Flanders.

To some of you in America this may seem an unnecessary and wasteful
quarrel, as other people's quarrels often are; but it comes to this
that though we are all killed there will be songs again, but if we
were to submit and so survive there could be neither songs nor dreams,
nor any joyous free things any more.

And do not regret the lives that are wasted amongst us, or the work
that the dead would have done, for war is no accident that man's care
could have averted, but is as natural, though not as regular, as the
tides; as well regret the things that the tide has washed away, which
destroys and cleanses and crumbles, and spares the minutest shells.

And now I will write nothing further about our war, but offer you
these books of dreams from Europe as one throws things of value, if
only to oneself, at the last moment out of a burning house.