1
Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it.Lord Dunsany
2
Our lord is a magic lord as we all desired, and magical things have sought him from over there, and they all obey his hests."" It is so, " said all but Gazic. And Gazic rose up in a pause of their gladness. "Many strange things, " he said, "have entered our village, coming from over there. And it may be that human folk are best, and the ways of the fields we know.Lord Dunsany
3
And she would not hold back his limbs when his heart was gone to the woods, for it is ever the way of witches with any two things to care for the more mysterious of the two.Lord Dunsany
4
There passed a child of four, a small girl on a footpath over the fields, going home in the evening to Erl. They looked at each other with round eyes." Hullo, " said the child." Hullo, child of men, " said the troll.. "What are you?" said the child." A troll of Elfland, " answered the troll. "So I thought, " said the child." Where are you going, child of men?" the troll asked." To the houses, " the child replied." We don't want to go there, " said the troll." N-no, " said the child." Come to Elfland, " the troll said. The child thought for a while. Other children had gone, and the elves always sent a changeling in their place, so that nobody quite missed them and nobody really knew. She thought awhile of the wonder and wildness of Elfland, and then of her own house." N-no, " said the child." Why not?" said the troll." Mother made a jam roll this morning, " said the child. And she walked on gravely home. Had it not been for that chance jam roll she had gone to Elfland."Jam! " said the troll contemptuously and thought of the tarns of Elfland, the great lily-leaves lying flat upon their solemn waters, the huge blue lilies towering into the elf-light above the green deep tarns: for jam this child had forsaken them!.Lord Dunsany
5
And then he went in the evening up to the nursery and told the boy how his mother was gone for a while to Elfland, to her father's palace (which may only be told of in song). And, unheeding any words of Orion then, he held on with the brief tale that he had come to tell, and told how Elfland was gone." But that cannot be, " said Orion, "for I hear the horns of Elfland every day."" You can hear them?" Alveric said. And the boy replied, "I hear them blowing at evening.Lord Dunsany
6
And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.Lord Dunsany
7
Indeed if one had just seen him at the end of the evening with the dusk and the mist of the fenlands close behind him he might have believed that in the dusk and the mist was an army that followed this gay worn confident man. Had the army been there Niv was sane. Had the world accepted that an army was there, still he was sane. But the lonely fancy that had not fact to feed on, nor the fancy of any other for fellowship, was for its loneliness mad. .Lord Dunsany