And then he turned his mind toward the shape of God, the One,
the Ineffable, who sits by the lotus lily, whose shape is the shape of
peace, and denieth activity, and went out his thanks to him that he
had cast all bad customs westward out of China as a woman throws
household dirt out of her basket far out into neighbouring gardens.
From thankfulness he turned to calm again, and out of calm to sleep.
A PRETTY QUARREL
On one of those unattained, and unattainable pinnacles that are known
as the Bleaks of Eerie, an eagle was looking East with a hopeful
presage of blood.
For he knew, and rejoiced in the knowledge, that eastward over the
dells the dwarfs were risen in Ulk, and gone to war with the
demi-gods.
The demi-gods are they that were born of earthly women, but their
sires are the elder gods who walked of old among men. Disguised they
would go through the villages sometimes in summer evenings, cloaked
and unknown of men; but the younger maidens knew them and always ran
to them singing, for all that their elders said: in evenings long ago
they had danced to the woods of the oak-trees. Their children dwelt
out-of-doors beyond the dells of the bracken, in the cool and heathery
lands, and were now at war with the dwarfs.
Dour and grim were the demi-gods and had the faults of both parents,
and would not mix with men but claimed the right of their fathers, and
would not play human games but forever were prophesying, and yet were
more frivolous than their mothers were, whom the fairies had long
since buried in wild wood gardens with more than human rites.
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