Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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He made about him a vehement sweeping gesture with his arm which emphasized more poignantly than speech the contrast he felt here where we sat—tight, confining walls, small stifling windows, chairs to rest the body, smothering roof and curtains, doors of narrow entrance and exit, floors to lift above the sweet surface of the soil,—all of them artificial barriers to shut out light and separate away from the Earth. "See what we've come to!" it said plainly. And it included even his clothes and boots and collar, the ridiculous hat upon the peg, the unsightly "brolly" in the dingy corner. Had there been room in me for laughter, I could well have laughed aloud.

* * * * *

For as he raced across that stretch of splendid mountainous Earth, watching the sunrise kiss the valleys and the woods, shaking the dew from his feet and swallowing the very wind for breath, he realized that other forms of life similar to his own were everywhere about him—also moving.

"They were a part of the Earth even as I was. Here she was crammed to the brim with them—projections of her actual self and being, crowded with this incomparable ancient beauty that was strong as her hills, swift as her running streams, radiant as her wild flowers. Whether to call them forms or thoughts or feelings, or Powers perhaps, I swear, old man, I know not. Her Consciousness through which I sped, drowned, lost, and happy, wrapped us all in together as a mood contains its own thoughts and feelings. For she was a Being—of sorts. And I was in her mind, mood, consciousness, call it what you best can. These other thoughts and presences I felt were the raw material of forms, perhaps—Forces that when they reach the minds of men must clothe themselves in form in order to be known, whether they be Dreams, or Gods, or any other kind of inspiration. Closer than that I cannot get…. I knew myself within her being like a child, and I felt the deep, eternal pull—to simple things."