Monte Carlo itself is a fairy city given over to the worship of the hazard: a toy town, designed for the entertainment of the idle and the rich: a stage, particularly furnished with properties to deceive the vulgar, to intrigue folk of a small imagination. ... It is a shrine at which the artificial is natural: the useless, of use: the unreal, real: the false, true: a temple in which the painted cardboard is gold and silver: the wooden sword, Excalibur; and the paste, jewels. But Monaco, or rather the harbour of Monaco, is of a reverse order, for, here, the natural is artificial: not the useless of use, but the useful, useless: not the unreal, real, but the real, unreal. It is a place of essential and primitive things which are, here, accidental and secondary.
Norman Davey (5 May 1888 – 6 June 1949) was an English engineer, soldier and professional writer.
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By Charing Cross in London Town </br> There runs a road of high renown, </br> Where antique books are ranged on shelves </br> As dark and dusty as themselves. And many booklovers have spent </br> Their substance there with great content, </br> And vexed their wives and filled their homes </br> With faded prints and massive tomes.
By the canal in Flanders I watched a barge’s prow </br> Creep slowly past the poplar-trees; and there I made a vow </br> That when these wars are over and I am home at last </br> However much I travel I shall not travel fast. </br> Horses and cars and yachts and planes: I’ve no more use for such; </br> For in three years of war’s alarms I’ve hurried far too much; </br> And now I dream of something sure, silent and slow and large; </br> So when the War is over — why, I mean to buy a barge.