Once Time as he prowled the world, his hair grey not with weakness
but with dust of the ruin of cities, came to a furniture shop and entered
the Antique department. And there he saw a man darkening the wood
of a chair with dye and beating it with chains and making imitation
wormholes in it.

And when Time saw another doing his work he stood by him awhile
and looked on critically.

And at last he said: "That is not how I work," and he turned the man's
hair white and bent his back and put some furrows in his little cunning
face; then turned and strode away, for a mighty city that was weary
and sick and too long had troubled the fields was sore in need of him.




THE LITTLE CITY


I was in the pre-destined 11.8 from Goraghwood to Drogheda, when
I suddenly saw the city. It was a little city in a valley, and only seemed
to have a little smoke, and the sun caught the smoke and turned it
golden, so that it looked like an old Italian picture where angels walk
in the foreground and the rest is a blaze of gold. And beyond, as one
could tell by the lie of land although one could not see through the
golden smoke, I knew that there lay the paths of the roving ships.

All round there lay a patchwork of small fields all over the slopes of