The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Land, by William Hope Hodgson

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Title: The Night Land

Author: William Hope Hodgson

Release Date: January 9, 2004 [EBook #10662]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE NIGHT LAND

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON

1912

THE DREAMS THAT ARE ONLY DREAMS

"This to be Love, that your spirit to live in a natural holiness with
the Beloved, and your bodies to be a sweet and natural delight that
shall be never lost of a lovely mystery.... And shame to be unborn, and
all things to go wholesome and proper, out of an utter greatness of
understanding; and the Man to be an Hero and a Child before the Woman;
and the Woman to be an Holy Light of the Spirit and an Utter Companion
and in the same time a glad Possession unto the Man.... And this doth be
Human Love...."

"...for this to be the especial glory of Love, that it doth make unto
all Sweetness and Greatness, and doth be a fire burning all Littleness;
so that did all in this world to have met The Beloved, then did
Wantonness be dead, and there to grow Gladness and Charity, dancing in
the years."

I

MIRDATH THE BEAUTIFUL

"And I cannot touch her face
And I cannot touch her hair,
And I kneel to empty shadows--
Just memories of her grace;
And her voice sings in the winds
And in the sobs of dawn
And among the flowers at night
And from the brooks at sunrise
And from the sea at sunset,
And I answer with vain callings ..."

It was the Joy of the Sunset that brought us to speech. I was gone a
long way from my house, walking lonely-wise, and stopping often that I
view the piling upward of the Battlements of Evening, and to feel the
dear and strange gathering of the Dusk come over all the world about me.

The last time that I paused, I was truly lost in a solemn joy of the
Glory of the Coming Night; and maybe I laughed a little in my throat,
standing there alone in the midst of the Dusk upon the World. And, lo!
my content was answered out of the trees that bounde