Top 15 E. R. Eddison Quotes

The black arrowed swoop of the moment swung high into the unceilinged future, ten, fifty, sixty years, may be: then, past seeing, up to that warmthless unconsidered mock-time, when nothing shall be left but the memorial that fits all (except, if there be, the most unhappiest) of human kind: I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.

Can a woman not keep her lover without she study to always please him with pleasure? Pew! then let her give up the game. Or shall my lover think with pleasing of me to win me indeed? Faugh! he payeth me then; doth he think I am for hire?

I will give your ladyship the answer I gave before, said that old man, who had sat motionless, serene and undisturbed, darting his bright and eager glance from painter to sitter and to painter again, and smiling as if with the aftertaste of ancient wine. You do marvel that his grace will still consume himself with striving to fix in art, in a seeming changelessness, those self-same appearances which in nature he prizeth by reason of their very mutability and subjection to change and death. Herein your ladyship, grounding yourself first unassailably upon most predicamental and categoric arguments in celarent, next propounded to me a syllogism in barbara, the major premiss whereof, being well and exactly seen, surveyed, overlooked, reviewed and recognized, was by my demonstrations at large convicted in fallacy of simple conversion and not per accidens; whereupon, countering in brahmantip, I did in conclusion confute you in bokardo, showing, in brief, that here there is no marvel; since 'tis women's minds alone are ruled by clear reason: men's are fickle and elusive as the jack-o'-lanterns they pursue.
A very complete and metaphysical answer, said she. Seeing 'tis given on my side, I'll let it stand without question; though (to be honest) I cannot tell what the dickens it means.
To be honest, madam, said the Duke, I paint because I cannot help it.

I heard her say, faint as the breath of night-flowers among the stars: 'The fabled land of Z<small>IMIAMVIA</small>. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?'
'Who knows?' I said. 'Who dares say he knows?'

Your great Italian clock measures the silence with its ticking: 'Another, gone! another, gone! another, gone!' Commonly, I have grown to hate such tickings, hideous to an old man as the grinning memento mori at the feast. But now, (perhaps the shock has deadened my feelings), I could almost cheat reason to believe there was in very truth eternity in these things: substance and everlasting life in what is more transient and unsubstantial than a mayfly, empirical, vainer than air, weak bubbles on the flux.

Now he conducted her through his armouries where he kept his weapons and weapons for his fighting men and all panoply of war. There he showed her swords and spears, maces and axes and daggers, orfreyed and damascened and inlaid with jewels; byrnies and baldricks and shields; blades so keen, a hair blown against them in a wind should be parted in twain; charmed helms on which no ordinary sword would bite. And Juss said unto the Queen, "Madam, what thinkest thou of these swords and spears? For know well that these be the ladder's rungs that we of Demonland climbed up by to that signiory and principality which now we hold over the four corners of the world." She answered, "O my lord, I think nobly of them. For an ill part it were while we joy in the harvest, to contemn the tools that prepared the land for it and reaped it."

"Hath your greatness," she said, "so much outgrown your wit, that you think I will abide to be your pensioner, that have been a Princess in Pixyland, a Queen of far-fronted Impland, and wife to the greatest soldier in this bold of Carcë, which till this day hath been the only scourge and terror of the world? O my lords of Demonland, good comfortable fools, speak to me no more, for your speech is folly. Go, doff your hats to the silly hind that runneth on the mountain; pray her gently dwell with you amid your stalled cattle, when you have slain her mate. Shall the blackening frost, when it hath blasted and starved all the sweet garden flowers, say to the rose, Abide with us; and shall she harken to such a wolfish suit?"
So speaking she drank the cup; and turning from those lords of Demonland as a queen turneth her from the unregarded multitude, kneeled gently down by Corund's bier, her white arms clasped about his head, her face pillowed on his breast.

Lord Gro was in that battle with the Demons. He ran Didarus through the neck with his sword, so that he fell down and was dead.
Corund, when he saw it, heaved up his axe, but changed his intention in the manage, saying, "O landskip of iniquity, shalt thou kill beside me the men of mine household? But my friendship sitteth not on a weather vane. Live, and be a traitor."
But Gro, being mightily moved with these words, and staring at great Corund wide-eyed like a man roused from a dream, answered, "Have I done amiss? 'Tis easy remedied." Therewith he turned about and slew a man of Demonland. Which Spitfire seeing, he cried out upon Gro in a great rage for a most filthy traitor, and bloodily rushing in thrust him through the buckler into the brain.
In such wise and by such a sudden vengeance did the Lord Gro most miserably end his life-days. Who, being a philosopher and a man of peace, careless of particular things of earth, had followed and observed all his days steadfastly one heavenly star; yet now in the bloody battle before Carcë died in the common opinion of men a manifold perjured traitor, that had at length gotten the guerdon of his guile.

And ere that was done, came a little page running to her chamber door, and when it was opened to him, stood panting from his running and said, "The king your husband bade me tell you, madam, and pray you go down to him i' the great hall. It may be ill news, I fear."
"Thou fearest, pap-face?" said the Queen. "I'll have thee whipped if thou bringest thy fears to me. Dost know aught? What's the matter?"
"The ship's much battered, O Queen. He is closeted with our Lord the King, the skipper. None dare speak else. 'Tis feared the high Admiral-----"
"Feared!" cried she, swinging round for the nurse to put about her white shoulders her mantle of sendaline and cloth of silver, that shimmered at the collar with purple amethysts and was scented with cedar and galbanum and myrrh.

The Lady Prezmyra leaned back to look again on her own mirrored loveliness. Her proud mouth sweetened to a smile. "Wilt thou learn me common women's wisdom?" said she, and there was yet more voluptuous sweetness trembling in her voice. "I will tell thee a story, as thou hast told them me in the old days in Norvasp to wile me to bed. Hast thou not heard tell how old Duke Hilmanes of Maltraëny, among some other fantasies such as appear by night unto many in divers places, had one in likeness of a woman with old face of low and little stature or body, which did scour his pots and pans and did such things as a maid servant ought to do, liberally and without doing of any harm? And by his art he knew this thing should be his servant still, and bring unto him whatsoever he would, so long time as he should be glad of the things it brought him. But this duke, being a foolish man and a greedy, made his familiar bring him at once all the year's seasons and their several goods and pleasures, and all good things of earth at one time. So as in six months' space, he being sated with these and all good things, and having no good thing remaining unto him to expect or to desire, for very weariness did hang himself. I would never have ta'en me an husband, nurse, and I had not known that I was able to give him every time I would a new heaven and a new earth, and never the same thing twice."

And the Lord Juss cried aloud in his agony, "Fling me to Tartarus, deliver me to the black infernal Furies, let them blind me, seethe me in the burning lake. For so should there yet be hope. But in this horror of Nothing is neither hope nor life nor death nor sleep nor waking, for ever. For ever."

Thou art nothing. And all thy desires and memories and loves and dreams, nothing. The little dead earth-louse were of greater avail than thou, were it not nothing as thou art nothing. For all is nothing: earth and sky and sea and they that dwell therein. Nor shall this illusion comfort thee, if it might, that when thou art abolished these things shall endure for a season, stars and months return, and men grow old and die, and new men and women live and love and die and be forgotten. For what is it to thee, that shalt be as a blown-out flame? and all things in earth and heaven, and things past and things for to come, and life and death, and the mere elements of space and time, of being and not being, all shall be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be nothing, for ever.

The Queen said, "Remember: when thou shalt see the lord thy brother in his own shape, that is no illusion. Mistrust all else. And the almighty Gods preserve and comfort thee." Therewith the hippogriff, as if maddened with the day-beams, plunged like a wild horse, spread wide its rainbow pinions, reared, and took wing. But the Lord Juss was sprung astride of it, and the grip of his knees on the ribs of it was like brazen clamps. The firm land seemed to rush away beneath him to the rear; the lake and the shore and islands thereof showed in a moment small and remote, and the figures of the Queen and his companions like toys, then dots, then shrunken to nothingness, and the vast silence of the upper air opened and received him into utter loneliness. In that silence earth and sky swirled like the wine in a shaken goblet as the wild steed rocketed higher and higher in great spirals. A cloud billowy-white shut in the sky before them; brighter and brighter it grew in its dazzling whiteness as they sped towards it, until they touched it and the glory was dissolved in a gray mist that grew still darker and colder as they flew till suddenly they emerged from the further side of the cloud into a radiance of blue and gold blinding in its glory.

And now in a soft voice she began supplication to the Gods which are from everlasting, calling upon them in turn by their holy names, upon gray-eyed Pallas, and Apollo, and Artemis the fleet Huntress, upon Aphrodite, and Here, Queen of Heaven, and Ares, and Hermes, and the dark-tressed Earthshaker. Nor was she afraid to address her holy prayers to him who from his veiled porch beside Acheron and Lethe Lake binds to his will the devils of the under-gloom, nor to the great Father of All in Whose sight time from the beginning until to-day is but the dipping of a wand into the boundless ocean of eternity.

Gently she drew her hand from Gro's, and he strove not to retain it. She eased forward the reins. Gro mounted and followed her. They rode quietly down to the road and so southward side by side to the harbour. Ere they came within earshot of the quay, Mevrian spake and said, "Thou'lt not think me graceless nor forgetful, my lord. All that is mine, O ask it, and I'll give it thee with both hands. But ask me not that I have not to give, or if I gave should give but false gold. For that's a thing not good for thee nor me, nor I would not do it to an enemy, far less to thee my friend."