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قراءة كتاب Living Alone
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
LIVING ALONE
BY
STELLA BENSON
AUTHOR OF "I POSE," "THIS IS THE END"
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920
First Edition 1919
Reprinted 1920 (twice)
This is not a real book. It does not deal with real people, nor should it be read by real people. But there are in the world so many real books already written for the benefit of real people, and there are still so many to be written, that I cannot believe that a little alien book such as this, written for the magically-inclined minority, can be considered too assertive a trespasser.
I have to thank the Editor of the Athenæum for allowing me to reprint the poem "Detachment" and the first chapter of this book. The courtesy of the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in permitting me to use again any of my contributions to his paper also enables me to include in the fifth chapter the tragic incident of the Mad 'Bus.
S.B.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I | MAGIC COMES TO A COMMITTEE | 1 |
| CHAPTER II | THE COMMITTEE COMES TO MAGIC | 19 |
| CHAPTER III | THE EVERLASTING BOY | 53 |
| CHAPTER IV | THE FORBIDDEN SANDWICH | 75 |
| CHAPTER V | AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM BELOW | 97 |
| CHAPTER VI | AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM ABOVE | 129 |
| CHAPTER VII | THE FAERY FARM | 155 |
| CHAPTER VIII | THE REGRETTABLE WEDNESDAY | 195 |
| CHAPTER IX | THE HOUSE OF LIVING ALONE MOVES AWAY | 221 |
| CHAPTER X | THE DWELLER ALONE | 257 |
THE DWELLER ALONE
Craven, beyond what comfort I can find,
It cries: "Oh, God, I am stricken with disaster."
Cries in the night: "I am stricken, I am blind...."
I will divorce it. I will make my dwelling
Far from my Self. Not through these hind'ring tears
Will I see men's tears shed. Not with these ears
Will I hear news that tortures in the telling.
And stillest place. For oh, I starve and thirst
To hear in quietness man's passionate protest
Against the doom with which his world is cursed.
Not my own wand'rings—not my own abidings—
Shall give my search a bias and a bent.
For me is no light moment of content,
For me no friend, no teller of the tidings.
Upon the cliffs of space. And on that sea
I will sail forth, nor fear to sink thereunder,
Immeasurable time supporting me:
That sea—that mother of a million summers,
Who bore, with melody, a million springs,
Shall sing for my enchantment, as she sings
To life's forsaken ones, and death's newcomers.
And there the immortal years do laugh at pain,
And here is promise of a blessed languor
To smooth at last the seas of time again.
And all those mothers' sons who did recover
From death, do cry aloud: "Ah, cease to mourn us.
To life and love you claimed that you had borne us,
But we have found death kinder than a lover."
Amid dark ruins for its yesterday;
Beats with its hands upon the doors of churches,
And, at their altars, finds it cannot pray.
But I am free—I am free of indecision,