Читать книгу The Court of the King, and Other Studies онлайн

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And sometimes it is filled with the very spirit of the little people: curious, amused, fantastic—as when you walk on a sea-shore, and suddenly, as with the touch of a charm, the pool at your feet becomes a little inland sea: you see the rocky shores sloping down, the sandy bottom, the submarine promontories through the blue: forests of seaweed sway; a terrible creature with claws crawls out through pale coralline; a lump of red jelly stretches out its arms and becomes now a living, crimson flower, now a horrid polypus ravaging, irresistible; a fairy being mailed in translucent armour floats on with antennæ fiercely waving; and you are back in fairyland.

Many times you may borrow the Red Cap to watch the boy Stevenson titanically carve mountains and seas in a mere mess of porridge; or to hear with Charles Kingsley when the grouse prophesies doom on the moor or the empty gnat boasts himself beside the stream. But sweetest of all it is to win for yourself the charm which opens your eyes in wood or field, and to hear with awakened ear the voices of created things.