Once when the gods were young and only Their swarthy servant Time was
without age, the gods lay sleeping by a broad river upon earth. There
in a valley that from all the earth the gods had set apart for Their
repose the gods dreamed marble dreams. And with domes and pinnacles the
dreams arose and stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all
shimmering white to the morning. In the city's midst the gleaming
marble of a thousand steps climbed to the citadel where arose four
pinnacles beckoning to heaven, and midmost between the pinnacles there
stood the dome, vast, as the gods had dreamed it. All around, terrace
by terrace, there went marble lawns well guarded by onyx lions and
carved with effigies of all the gods striding amid the symbols of the
worlds. With a sound like tinkling bells, far off in a land of
shepherds hidden by some hill, the waters of many fountains turned
again home. Then the gods awoke and there stood Sardathrion. Not to
common men have the gods given to walk Sardathrion's streets, and not
to common eyes to see her fountains. Only to those to whom in lonely
passes in the night the gods have spoken, leaning through the stars, to
those that have heard the voices of the gods above the morning or seen
Their faces bending above the sea, only to those hath it been given to
see Sardathrion, to stand where her pinnacles gathered together in the
night fresh from the dreams of gods. For round the valley a great
desert lies through which no common traveller may come, but those whom
the gods have chosen feel suddenly a great longing at heart, and
crossing the mountains that divide the desert from the world, set out
across it driven by the gods, till hidden in the desert's midst they
find the valley at last and look with eyes upon Sardathrion.

In the desert beyond the valley grow a myriad thorns, and all pointing
towards Sardathrion. So may many that the gods have loved come to the
marble city, but none can return, for other cities are no fitting home