THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY

It lay between the mountains and the sea, and a river ran down past it,
carrying its good and ill news to a pacific shore, and out upon soft
winds, travelling lazily to the scarlet east. All white and a tempered
red, it nestled in a valley with other valleys on lower steppes, which
seemed as if built by the gods, that they might travel easily from the
white-topped mountains, Margath, Shaknon, and the rest, to wash their
feet in the sea. In the summer a hot but gracious mistiness softened the
green of the valleys, the varying colours of the hills, the blue of the
river, the sharp outlines of the cliffs. Along the high shelf of the
mountain, muletrains travelled like a procession seen in dreams--slow,
hazy, graven yet moving, a part of the ancient hills themselves; upon the
river great rafts, manned by scarlet-vested crews, swerved and swam,
guided by the gigantic oars which needed five men to lift and
swayargonauts they from the sweet-smelling forests to the salt-smelling
main. In winter the little city lay still under a coverlet of pure white,
with the mists from the river and the great falls above frozen upon the
trees, clothing them as graciously as with white samite; so that far as
eye could see there was a heavenly purity upon all, covering every mean
and distorted thing. There were days when no wind stirred anywhere, and
the gorgeous sun made the little city and all the land round about a
pretty silver kingdom, where Oberon and his courtiers might have danced
and been glad. Often, too, you could hear a distant wood-cutter's axe
make a pleasant song in the air, and the wood-cutter himself, as the
hickory and steel swung in a shining half-circle to the bole of balsam,
was clad in the bright livery of frost, his breath issuing in grey smoke
like life itself, mystic and peculiar, man, axe, tree, and breath one