On (Essays Collection). Hilaire Belloc

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СКАЧАТЬ This man said that all we do and the time in which we do it is rather a night than a day. He said that when we came to an end we vanished, we and our works, but that we vanished into a broadening light.

      Which of these three knew best the nature of man and of his works, and which knew best of what nature was the end?

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      Why so glum, my Lad, or my Lass (as the case may be), why so heavy at heart? Did you not know that you also must Come to an End?

      Why, that woman of Etaples who sold such Southern wine for the dissipation of the Picardian Mist, her time is over and gone and the wine has been drunk long ago and the singers in her house have departed, and the wind of the sea moans in and fills their hall. The Lords who died in Roncesvalles have been dead these thousand years and more, and the loud song about them grew very faint and dwindled and is silent now: there is nothing at all remains.

      It is certain that the hills decay and that rivers as the dusty years proceed run feebly and lose themselves at last in desert sands; and in its aeons the very firmament grows old. But evil also is perishable and bad men meet their judge. Be comforted.

      Now of all endings, of all Comings to an End none is so hesitating as the ending of a book which the Publisher will have so long and the writer so short: and the Public (God Bless the Public) will have whatever it is given.

      Books, however much their lingering, books also must Come to an End. It is abhorrent to their nature as to the life of man. They must be sharply cut off. Let it be done at once and fixed as by a spell and the power of a Word; the word

      FINIS

      ON EVERYTHING

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       On Song

       On an Empty House

       The Landfall

       The Little Old Man

       The Long March

       On Saturnalia

       A Little Conversation in Herefordshire

       On the Rights of Property

       The Economist

       A Little Conversation in Carthage

       The Strange Companion

       The Visitor

       A Reconstruction of the Past

       The Reasonable Press

       Asmodeus

       The Death of the Comic Author

       On certain Manners and Customs

       The Statesman

       The Duel

       On a Battle, or “Journalism,” or “Points of View”

       A Descendant of William Shakespeare

       On the Approach to Western England

       The Weald

       On London and the Houses in it

       On Old Towns

       A Crossing of the Hills

       The Barber

       On High Places

       On Some Little Horses

       On Streams and Rivers

       On Two Manuals

       On Fantastic Books

       The Unfortunate Man

       The Contented Man

       The Missioner

       The Dream

       The Silence of the Battlefields

       Novissima Hora

       СКАЧАТЬ