Riverdream at Sunset: a Manuscript

by GroaningGreyAgony

Introduction

Not very long ago, I won a lot at Berman's Auction Gallery in Dover, NJ, which included a box of old books, most of which were in poor condition. One, entitled Ways of the Wasp, had lost its spine and a number of pages, but between chapters twelve and fourteen I discovered a handwritten manuscript. I knew at once that I had made an important find, as the handwriting and the style of the contents left little doubt as to the identity of its author.

Edward J. M. D. Plunkett (1878-1957), the 18th Baron of the Irish demesne of Dunsany, was a renowned and influential author of fantastic tales who wrote under the penname of Lord Dunsany. His evocative and poetic style, rich in the names of invented and exotic lands, and the sense of the uncanny and wondrous that pervades any tale of faerie, influenced many writers, among them H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, Larry Niven, and Arthur C. Clarke, who was inspired by Dunsany's Jorkens stories to write his Tales of the White Hart.

Formal authentication of the MS is in progress, but I have retained scans of the original and have transcribed it as best I can. Considering both the age of the manuscript and its subject matter, which should be of interest to the readers of this site, I have presumed to present the transcription here.

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For how short a while man speaks, and withal how vainly.
And for how long he is silent.
Only the other day I met a king in Thebes,
who had been silent already for four thousand years.
—Lord Dunsany, The Idle City

Comments

[Nyerguds]

Truly? A Story like this, and not a single moustache in the comments? A travesty, I say!

[Lurks-no-More]

A Dunsany-themed pony fic? This calls for mustaches, indeed!