 The beginning by E. Nesbitt. Read for our love stories volume 1 by Chad Horner from Liverpool. This is a little box. According to all little box recordings around the public domain, the more information are developed here, please visit littlebox.org. The beginning from The Incredible Honeymoon by E. Nesbitt. To understand this story, we'll have to believe in the greater gods, love and youth, for example. An adventure and coincidence, also in the trusting heart of a woman and the deceitful spirit of man. You will have to reconcile yourself to the fact that though daily you go to London by the 9.7, returning by the 5.15 and you have accustomed meals at 8.1 and half past 6, there are those who take neither trains nor meals regularly. That, while nothing on earth ever happens to you, there really are on earth people to whom things do happen, nor is the possibility of such happenings only a matter of the independent, the income, the income for which you do not work. It is a matter of the individual soul. I knew a man whose parents had placed him in that paralyzing sort of situation which is symbolised by the regular drain and the regular meals. It was quite a nice situation for some people, a situation to in which one was certain to get on, but the man I knew had other dreams. He chopped his job one fine Saturday morning in May, went for a long walk, met a tinker and bought his outfit, a wheel on wheels, sort of barrow, with a grindstone on it, and a pot for putting fire and dangling underneath. This he wheeled profitably through rural districts, so profitably that he was presently able to buy a donkey and a cart, and to sell cows as well as mend them. He has since bought a gypsy tent with these impediments or helps. He travels through the pleasant country. Things are always happening to him. He has found a buried treasure, frustrated a burglary. Once he rescued a lady in distress, and another time he killed a man, the background to these dramatic incidents is always the pleasant background, quiet, mood, blossoming hedgerows and orchards, cornfields and meadows and lanes. He says this is the way to live. I will write down his story some day, but this is not it. I only bring him in to illustrate my point, which is that adventures do happen to the adventurous. My friend, the tinker, has had perhaps more than his share of adventures, but then his is the temperament that shuts, like a willing needle, to the great magnet of melodrama, the temperamental needle of Edward Passingstoke. Follow the magnet of romance. In a gayer, if less comfortable age, he might have been a night-errant, or at least the sympathetic squire of a night-errant. Had he been born in the days when most people stayed at home and minded their own business, he would have insisted on going out and minding other peoples. Living in the days of airplanes, motors, telegraphy, and cinematographs, in a world noisy with the nonsense of politics on the press, he told himself that the ideal life was the life of the farmer who plowed and sowed and reaped, tended his base and filled his barns, and went home from his clean, quiet work to the open hearth whence the wood spoke, curled up to heaven, like the smoke of an altar. Destiny, in deep perversity, was making an engineer of him. He dreamed his pastoral dreams, in the deafening clanger of the shops at Crewe. But not 10,000 hammers could beat out of his brain the faith that life really was, little as one might have said, just looking at it from Crewe, full of the most beautiful and delicate possibilities and that some or other people got from life what they chose to take. While he was making up his mind what he should take, he went on learning history, and Destiny seemed determined that he should learn nothing else. What we call Destiny is really chance, and so far from being immutable, she is the various flirt and weather cog, she changed her mind about Edward, or perhaps death, who is stronger than she insisted and revealed, just at the time when a faint dust was beginning to settle on his dreams, the sort of dust that thickens and heartens into clay, and you grow cabbages in it, death intervened to save him. It was his uncle who died, and he left a will, and by that will certain property came to Edward, when the news came he took a day to think of it, and he went to the works as usual that afternoon and the next morning. But next day, at noon, he laid dynastils and never took them up again, instead he took a tick up to Oxford, and appeared at the rooms of his friend, whom he surprised, and slumbered and told his tale, And you're going to chuck the shop, said the friend, whose name was Vernon, Martin Gale, and his father, Ibaronet. I have chucked the shop, said Edward, I chucked it at fate, as you might throw a stone at a dog, and that reminds me, I want a dog. Do you know of a nice dog, intelligent, good manners, self-respecting, unworthy? Any particular breed, certainly not. These researches into family history are in the worst possible taste. You don't love me for my pedigree. Why should I love my dog for his? I suppose you want some tea anyhow, said Martin Gale. So they had tea, talked, crick it. Any idea what you mean to do? Martin Gale asked several times, and at last Edward answered him. What I mean to do, he said, is what I always meant to do. I mean to be a farmer and hunt and shed a group of flowers. I think I shall specialise on some flowers. They're so satisfying. More than you are, said Vernon, mean to say you're going to buy a farm and rein yourself the moment you've got a few half-crowns to rein yourself with. I'm going to be a farmer, said passing the stoke, but first I'm going to see life. Life? But you were always so, I mean that, Edward indicated the sunshine outside, not getting drunk and being disreputable. I can't think why the juice-dickens that sort of beastliness is always called seeing life. As if life were all gas and whining and electric light and the things you don't talk about before ladies. No, my boy, I'm going out into the unknown, not into the night, because it happens to be afternoon. And I thought I'd just come and clasp that hand and gaze once into either's eyes before I set my foot on the untrodden path of venture. Farewell, Vernon, of Martin Gale, good night and true, but who knows when we shall meet again. I don't anyhow, said Vernon, and that's why you're not going till the day after tomorrow, and why I insist on knowing what you mean by seeing life and why you're going to stay till tomorrow anyhow. Heaven forbid that I should criticize another man's tastes, Edward's side, or deprive him of any innocent enjoyment. If you want me to stay, well, I'll stay till tomorrow, and as for what I mean by seeing life, well, I should have thought even you would have understood that. I'm going to get a stick and a knapsack and a dog and a different kind of hat and some very large boots with nails and a new suit. Only I shall wear it all night before I wear it all day. Oh Vernon, can't you guess my simple secret? He calls a walking tour seeing life. Vernon pointed out, and he's going with you, and where are you going? The Harts Mountains, the Carpathians, Margaret, Druga, what? The person who is going with me, said Edward, is the dog whom we haven't yet bought. Come along, come along out and buy him. As to where I'm going, I shall follow the most ancient of signposts, and I know that I can't go wrong. You will follow. My nose, Edward explained kindly. That indicator of the place to be, the heaven sent guide to beauty and to thee. Do you know if you talk raw to the chaps of the works? They try to understand what you mean, like the Scotchmen, you know. They think they can understand anything, no matter how shallow. Now I will say for you that you know your limitations. Let's buy the dog my son and get a canoe. They did, and the dog upset the canoe. End of the beginning by E. Nesbeth. Autumn Flowers by Alexander Kuprin. Read for Love Stories Volume 1 by Anne Fletcher, 2019. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Autumn Flowers, my dear angry friend. I write angry because I can imagine first your stupefaction, and then your anger when you receive this letter, and learn by it that I have not kept my word, that I have deceived you and have suddenly left the town instead of waiting for you tomorrow evening in my hotel, as had been decided. My darling, I've simply run away from you, or rather from us both, have run away from that torturing, that awkward and unnecessary tension which unfailingly would have sprung up between us again, and don't hasten with that caustic smile of yours to accuse me of a saving wisdom, for you know more than anyone on earth how that leaves me when I'm most in need of it. God is my witness that up to the last minute I did not know whether I should really go or not. Even now I'm not at all sure that I shall resist to the end the intolerable temptation to have one more look at you, if only one more, even fugitively, even from a distance. I don't even know that I shall keep myself sufficiently in hand not to jump out of this railway carriage after the third bell. That is why when I finish this letter, if I can only manage to finish it, I shall give it to a porter and tell him to post it at the very moment when the train starts, and I shall watch him from the window and feel as if I were actually saying goodbye to you, that painful oppression of the heart. Forgive me. All that I told you about lemons and sea air and doctors who wanted to send me here from Petersburg was untrue. I came here solely because I was irresistibly drawn to you, aching to recapture a poor little particle of that burning, dazzling happiness which sometimes we reveled in prodigly and carelessly, like zars in fairy tales. From what I've told you, I think you must have gathered a rather clear picture of my mode of life in that gigantic zoo which is called Petersburg Society, visits, theatres, balls, my compulsory at home days, the charity bazaars, etc., etc., in all of which I must play the role of a decorative advertisement to my husband's career and business affairs. But please don't expect from me the usual tirade about the meanness, the emptiness, the flatness, the falsehood. I've forgotten how they put it in our society novels. I have been drawn into this life, with its comforts, its good manners, its novelties, connections, its associations, and I should never have the force to tear myself away from it. But my heart has no share in it. Some sort of people flash before my eyes, repeat some sort of words, and I myself do things of some sort, talk about something. But neither the people nor the words reach my soul. And sometimes all this seems to be happening far, far away from me, as if in a book or a picture, as though it were all arranged, as Domnushka my old nurse used to say. And suddenly, in this dull, indifferent life, I was caught up by a wave from our dear sweet past. Did you ever happen to wake up from one of those strange dreams, which are so joyous that after them one goes about the whole day in a state of blissful intoxication, and which are at the same time so feeble in themselves, that if you repeated them, not merely to a stranger, but to your dearest friend on earth, they would sound null and flat, almost grotesque. Dreamers often lie, says Shakespeare's Mercutio, and my God, what a deep psychological truth there is in that. Well then, I too once woke up after such a dream. I saw myself in a boat with you, somewhere far out to sea. You were holding the oars, and I was lying in the stern, looking up at the blue sky. That was the whole dream. The boat was rocking slightly, and the sky was so blue, that sometimes I seemed to be looking into a bottomless abyss, and a kind of unattainable feeling of joy permeated my soul with such tenderness, such harmony, that I wanted to cry and laugh at the same moment from too much happiness. I woke up, but the dream remained in my soul, as if it had taken root in it. With a little effort of imagination, I was often able to recall it and to recapture a pale shadow at least of my dream. Sometimes it would come to me in the drawing-room during some lifeless conversation, which one listens to without hearing, and then I would have to cover my eyes with my hand for a moment to hide their unexpected gleam. Oh, how powerfully, how inevitably I was drawn to you! How that captivating magic tale of our love that flashed into my life six years ago under those caressing southern skies rises up before me, new-born in such moments. Everything comes back to me in a rush. Our sudden quarrels, stupid jealousies, the comic suspicions and the joyous reconciliations, after which our kisses renewed their first fresh charm. The eagerly anticipated meetings, the feeling of sad emptiness in those minutes after parting in the evening, only to see each other again the next morning, when again and again we would turn at the same moment and our eyes would meet over the shoulders of the crowd that separated us, looking pink against the background of the dusky sunset. I remembered every atom of this illumined life, so full of strong, untrammeled happiness. We couldn't remain in the same spot. We were drawn eagerly to fresh places and fresh impressions. How charming they were, our long trips in those antediluvian stuffy diligence covered with dirty sailcloth in the company of gloomy Germans with red sinewy necks and faces that looked as if they'd been roughly carved out of wood, and the lean, prim German women who stared at us with stupefied eyes as they listened to our mad laughter, and those haphazard lunches at some good old honest settlers under the shade of the flower-laden acacia hidden away in a clean yard that was surrounded by a white wall and covered with sand from the seashore. Don't you remember them? How ravenously we used to attack the stuffed mackerels and the rough, sour wine of the country, indulging in thousands of funny, tender little bitties, like that historic, impersonate kiss which made all the tourists turn their backs on us with indignation and the warm, july nights in the fishing villages? Do you remember that extraordinary moonlight which was so bright that it seemed fantastic and unreal? That calm, irradiated sea with ripples of silvery moir and on the litter background the dark outlines of the fishermen as they drew in their nets monotonously and rhythmically all bending in the same direction. But sometimes we'd be seized by a longing for the noise of town and the hurly-burly of strangers lost in an unknown crowd we would wander pressing against each other and realising more than ever our nearness to each other. Do you remember, my darling? As for me, I remember every minute detail and feel it until it hurts. All that is mine. It lives in me and will be with me always to my death. I could never, even if I wanted to, get rid of it. Do you understand? Never. And yet it's not a reality and I torture myself with the knowledge that I could never live it and feel it again because, God or nature, I really don't know which after giving man an almost God-like intelligence has at the same time invented for him two torturing traps ignorance of the future and the impossibility of forgetting the past with the equal impossibility of returning to it. On receiving the little note that I sent you at once from the hotel you hastened to me. You were hurrying and you were agitated. I knew it at a distance by your quick nervous step and also because before knocking at my door you stood quite a long time in the corridor. At that moment I was equally nervous myself realising that you were standing there behind the door only two steps away from me, pale pressing your hand tightly against your heart and breathing deeply and even with difficulty and for some reason or other it seemed to me then impossible, unimaginable that at once in a few seconds I should see you and hear your voice. I was in a mood such as one experiences when half asleep and one sees things rather clearly but without waking up one says to oneself this is not real it's only a dream. You had changed during the years you'd become more manly you seem to have grown your black jacket suits you much better than your student's tunic your manners have become more collected your eyes look at one with more assurance and more coldly that fashionable pointed little beard of yours is decidedly becoming you thought that I too had improved in looks and I quite believe that you said it sincerely all the more because I read it in your first quick slightly surprised glance every woman unless she is hopelessly stupid will realise unerringly the impression that her appearance has produced all the way down here in the train I was trying to imagine our meeting I admit that I never thought it would turn out so strange so strained so awkward for both of us we exchanged unimportant commonplace words about my journey about Petersburg about our health but the eyes of each were searching the others jealously looking for what had been added by time and a strange life that was completely unknown to the other conversation failed us we began with voo in an artificial affected tone but both of us soon felt that every minute made it more difficult and more stupid to keep it up there seemed to be between us some foreign oppressive cold obstacle and we did not know how to remove it the spring evening was quietly fading it grew dark in the room I wanted to ring for lights but you protested against it perhaps the darkness helped us in our decision to touch upon the past we began to talk about it with that kindly condescending mockery with which grown-up people allude to the pranks of their childhood but the odd part of it was that the more we tried to deceive each other and ourselves and appear gay and indifferent the sadder grew our tone at last we became silent and sat for a long time I in the corner of the sofa knew in the armchair without moving almost without breathing through the open window there came to us the indistinct drone of the large town the noise of wheels the horse shrieks of the tramway hooters the jerky bicycle bells and as always on spring evenings these sounds reached us softened into a melancholy that was almost tender through the window one could see a narrow strip of the sky pale as faded bronze and against it the dark silhouette of a roof with chimneys and a watchtower that shimmered faintly in the darkness I could not distinguish your figure but I could see the shining of your eyes fixed on the window and I thought there were tears in them do you know what comparison occurred to me while we silently reviewed our dear touching memories? it was as though we had met after years of separation at the tomb of someone whom we had both at one time loved with equal fondness a quiet cemetery, spring, young grass all around the lilacs are blossoming and we are standing beside the familiar tomb unable to go, unable to shake off the sad, confused and endlessly dear phantoms that have claimed us this dead being it's our old love my darling suddenly you broke the silence jumping up and pushing your chair sharply away no you exclaimed this is impossible this is becoming torment I could hear how painfully your voice shook for God's sake let us get out into the fresh air or I shall break down or go mad we went out the transparent, soft, tawny darkness of the spring evening was already in the air enveloping with amazing lightness, delicacy and distinctness the angles of buildings, the branches of trees and the contours of human figures when we had passed the boulevards you called a cab and I knew already where you wished to take me there everything is as it once was the long stretch of yellow sand carefully pounded down the bright blue lights of hanging electric lanterns the playful, exhilarating sounds of the military orchestra and the long rows of little marble tables occupied by men and women the indistinct and monotonous talk of the crowd the hastily darting waiters the never-changing, stimulating environment of an expensive restaurant heavens how quickly how ceaselessly the human being changes and how permanent and immovable are the places and things that surround him in this contrast there is always something infinitely sad and mysterious you know it has sometimes been my lot to stumble on bad lodgings not merely bad but disgusting utterly impossible and in addition to this to encounter a whole series of unpleasant incidents disappointments, illness when you change lodgings like those you really think that you entered the zone of heaven but a week or so later it is enough to pass by chance that very house and glance up at the empty windows with the white placard stuck on them for your soul to become oppressed by a painful language regret it is true that everything there was odious and distressing but all the same you seem to have left there a whole strip of your life a strip that you cannot recover just as before girls with baskets of flowers were standing at the doors of the restaurant do you remember how you used always to choose for me two roses one dark crimson and the other tea coloured as we were driving past I noticed by a sudden movement of your hand that you wanted to do the same but you pulled yourself up in time how grateful I was to you for this my dear one under hundreds of curious eyes we made our way to the same little arbor that juts out so impertinently over the sea front at a fearful height so that when you look down leaning over the railing you cannot see the shore and you seem to be swimming in the air beneath our feet the sea was clamouring at this height it looked so dark and terrible not far from the shore large black angular rocks emerged from the water the waves were constantly rushing at them breaking themselves against them and covering them with mounds of white foam when the waves retreated the wet polished flanks of the rocks shone as if they'd been varnished and reflected the lights of the electric globes sometimes a gentle little breeze would blow up saturated with such a strong healthy smell of seaweed, fish and salt ozone that one's lungs expanded from it of their own accord and one's nostrils dilated but something bad, dull and constraining was more and more surely chaining us down when champagne was brought in you filled my glass and you said with gloomy gaiety well let us try to get a little artificial life let us drink this good brave wine as the fiery French say no in any case the good brave wine would not have helped us you grasped that yourself for you added immediately with a long sigh do you remember how we used to be both of us from morning till night drunk without wine merely from our love and the joy of life below on the sea near the rocks a skiff appeared its large white stately sails swinging prettily as it dipped and rose through the waves in the skiff one could hear a woman's laugh and someone probably a foreigner was whistling quite in tune with the orchestra the melodies of the vault toy for waltz you too were following the sails with your eyes and still looking at it you said dreamily it would be nice to get into a little boat like that and go far out to sea out of sight of land do you remember how we used to do it in the old days yes our old days are dead it slipped from me unintentionally in answer to my thoughts when immediately I was frightened by the unexpected effect that the words produced on you you grew suddenly so white and threw yourself back in your chair so quickly that I thought you were fainting a minute later you began to speak in a strangled voice that seemed suddenly to have become horse how oddly our thoughts have met I was just thinking the same it seems to me fantastic, unreal, impossible that it was really we, not two other people quite strange as to us whose six years ago loved each other so madly and reveled in life so fully, so beautifully those two have long ceased to belong to this world they have died, died we return to the town the road ran through cluster after cluster of villas built by the local millionaires we passed impressive cast-iron railings and high stone walls behind which the thick green of pletains hung down over the road enormous gateways carved like lacework gardens with wreaths of many coloured lanterns magnificent verandas brilliantly illuminated exotic plants in the flower gardens in front of villas which seemed like magic palaces the whiter caches had such a strong odour that the aroma of their luscious sweetness could be felt even on one's lips sometimes we experienced for a second a damp chilliness but immediately afterwards we passed once more into the perfumed warmth of the quiet spring night the horses were running fast their hoofbeats falling loudly in even time we swayed gently on the carriage springs as we sat, silent when we were nearing the town I felt your arm cautiously, slowly winding round my waist and quietly but insistently it drew me to you I made no resistance but did not yield to this embrace and you understood and you were ashamed you withdrew your arm and I groped in the dark for your hand gratefully pressing it and it answered me with a friendly, apologetic pressure but I knew that your wounded male pride would assert itself all the same and I was not wrong just before we parted at the entrance to the hotel you asked permission to come to see me I fixed a day and then forgive me I stealthily ran away from you oh my darling if not tomorrow then in another two days in a week perhaps there would have flamed up in us merely sensuality against which honour and will and mind are powerless we would have robbed those two dead people by substituting for our love of the past a false and ludicrous make-believe and the dead people would have cruelly avenged themselves by creating between us quarrels, distrust, coldness and what is more terrible than all the rest a ceaseless, jealous comparison of the present with the past goodbye in the heat of writing I have not noticed how I've passed on to the old tube of lovers I'm sure that in a few days when the first ache of your wounded pride has passed you will share my opinion and will stop being angry at my escape the first bell has just sounded but I'm sure now that I shall resist temptation and shall not jump out of the train all the same our brief meeting is beginning in my imagination to clothe itself in a little cloud of smoke a kind of tender quiet poetic submissive sadness do you remember that beautiful verse of Pushkin autumn flowers are dearer than the beautiful newborn ones of the fields so sometimes the hour of parting is more vivid than the meeting itself yes my darling these very autumn flowers have you ever been out in a garden late in autumn on a wet morose morning the almost naked trees are threadbare and swing to and fro the fallen leaves rot on the paths on all sides is death and desolation and only in the flowerbeds above the drooping yellow stalks of the other flowers the autumn asters and dailiers bloom brightly do you remember their sharp grassy odour you're standing perhaps in a strange listlessness near the flowerbeds shivering with cold you smell this melancholy purely autumnal odour and you're distressed there is everything in this distress regret for the summer that has fled so quickly expectation of the cold winter with its snow and the wind howling through the chimneys and regret for one's own summer that has so swiftly rushed away my dearest one my only one exactly that feeling has taken hold of my soul at this moment in a little time your recollection of our meeting will become for you just as tender sweet sad and poignant goodbye then I kiss you on your clever beautiful eyes your zee end of autumn flowers The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde read for love stories volume one by Nislihan Stamboli this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Nightingale and the Rose she said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses cried the young student but in all my garden there is no red rose from her nest in the hallmark tree the Nightingale heard him and she looked out through the leaves and wondered no red rose in all my garden he cried and his beautiful eyes filled with tears on what little things does happiness depend I have read all that the wise man have written and all the secrets of philosophy are mine yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched here at last is a true lover said the Nightingale night after night have I sung of him though I knew him not night after night have I told his story to the stars and now I see him his hair is dark as the hyacinth blossom and his lips are red as the rose of his desire but passion has made his face like pale ivory and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow the Prince gives a ball tomorrow night murmured the young student and my love will be of the company if I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn if I bring her a red rose I shall hold her in my arms and she will lean her head upon my shoulder and her hand will be clasped in mine but there is no red rose in my garden so I shall sit lonely and she will pass me by she will have no heed of me and my heart will break here indeed is the true lover said the Nightingale what I sing of his suffers what is joy to me to him is pain surely love is a wonderful thing it is more precious than emeralds and dearer than fine opals pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it nor is it set forth in the marketplace it may not be purchased of the merchants nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold the musicians will sit in their gallery said the young student and play upon their stringed instruments and my love will dance to the sound of the harp and the violin she will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor and the courtiers in their gay dresses will throng around her but with me she will not dance for I have no red rose to give her and he flung himself down on the grass and buried his face in his hands and wept why is he weeping asked the little green lizard as he ran past him with his tail in the air why indeed said a butterfly who was fluttering about after a sunbeam why indeed whispered a daisy to his neighbour in a soft low voice he's weeping for a red rose said the Nightingale for a red rose they cried how very ridiculous and the little lizard who was something of a cynic laughed outright but the Nightingale understood the secret of the student's sorrow and she sat silent in the oak tree and thought about the mystery of love suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight and soared into the air she passed through the grove like a shadow and like a shadow she sailed across the garden in the centre of the grass plots was standing a beautiful rose tree and when she saw it she flew over to it and lit upon a spray give me a red rose she cried and I will sing you my sweetest song but the tree shook its head my roses are white it answered as white as the foam of the sea and whiter than the snow upon the mountain but go to my brother who grows round the old sundial and perhaps he will give you what you want so the Nightingale flew over to the rose tree that was growing round the old sundial give me a red rose she cried and I will sing you my sweetest song but the tree shook its head my roses are yellow it answered as yellow as the hair of the mermaid who sits upon an amber throne and yellower than the daffodil that blooms in the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe but go to my brother who grows beneath the students window and perhaps he will give you what you want so the Nightingale flew over to the rose tree that was growing beneath the students window give me a red rose she cried and I will sing you my sweetest song but the tree shook its head my roses are red it answered as red as the feet of the dove and redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean cavern but the winter has chilled my veins and the frost has nipped my buds and the storm has broken my branches and I shall have no roses at all this year one red rose is all I want cried the Nightingale only one red rose is there no way by which I can get it there is a way answered the tree but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you tell it to me said the Nightingale I'm not afraid if you want a red rose said the tree you must build it out of music by moonlight and stain it with your own heart's blood you must sing to me with your breast against a thorn all night long you must sing to me and the thorn must pierce your heart and your lifeblood must flow into my veins and become mine death is a great price to pay for a red rose cried the Nightingale and life is very dear to all it is pleasant to sit in the green wood and to watch the sun in its chariot of gold and the moon in her chariot of pearl sweet is the scent of the hawthorn and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley and the heather that blows on the hill yet love is better than life and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man so she spread her brown wings for flight and soared into the air she swept over the garden like a shadow and like a shadow she sailed through the grove the young student was still lying on the grass where she had left him and the tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes be happy cried the Nightingale be happy you shall have your red rose I will build it out of music by moonlight and stain it with my own heart's blood all that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover for love is wiser than philosophy though she's wise and mightier than power though he's mighty and colored are his wings and colored like flame is his body his lips are sweet as honey and his breath is like frankincense the student looked up from the grass and listened but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him for he only knew the things that are written down in books but the oak tree understood and felt sad for he was very fond of the little Nightingale who had built her nest in his branches sing me one last song, you whispered I shall feel very lonely when you're gone so the Nightingale sang to the oak tree and her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar when she had finished her song the student got up and pulled a notebook and a lead pencil out of his pocket she has form he said to himself as he walked away through the grove that cannot be denied to her but has she got feeling I'm afraid not in fact she's like most artists she's all style without any sincerity she would not sacrifice herself for others she thinks merely of music and everybody knows that the arts are selfish still it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice what a pity it is that they do not mean anything or do any practical good and he went into his room and laid down on his little pallet bed and began to think of his love and after a time he fell asleep and when the moon shone in the heavens the nightingale flew to the rose tree and set her breast against the thorn all night long she sang with her breast against the thorn and the cold crystal moon leaned down and listened all night long she sang and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast and her lifeblood ebbed away from her she sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl and on the topmost spray of the rose tree there blossomed a marvellous rose petal following petal a song followed song pale was it at first as the mist that hangs over the river pale as the feet of the morning and silver as the wings of the dawn as the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver as the shadow of a rose in a water pool so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the tree but the tree cried to the nightingale to press closer against the thorn press closer little nightingale cried the tree or the day will come before the rose is finished so the nightingale pressed closer against the thorn and louder and louder grew her song for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid and the delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride but the thorn had not yet reached her heart so the rose's heart remained white for only a nightingale's heart's blood can crimson the heart of a rose and the tree cried to the nightingale to press closer against the thorn press closer little nightingale cried the tree or the day will come before the rose is finished so the nightingale pressed closer against the thorn and the thorn touched her heart and a fierce pang of pain shot through her bitter, bitter was the pain and wilder and wilder grew her song for she sang of the love that is perfected by death of the love that dies not in the tomb and the marvelous rose became crimson like the rose of the eastern sky crimson was the girdle of petals and crimson as a ruby was the heart but the nightingale's voice grew fainter and her little wings began to beat and the film came over her eyes fainter and fainter grew her song and she felt something choking her in her throat then she gave one last burst of music the white moon heard it and she forgot the dawn and lingered on in the sky the red rose heard it and it trembled all over with ecstasy and opened its petals to the cold morning air echo bore it to her purple cavern and the hills and walked the sleeping shepherds from their dreams it floated through the reeds of the river and they carried its message to the sea look look cried the tree the rose is finished now but the nightingale made no answer for she was lying dead in the long grass with the thorn in her heart and at noon the student opened his window and looked out why what a wonderful piece of luck he cried here's the red rose I've never seen any rose like it in all my life it's so beautiful that I'm sure it has a long letter name and he leaned down and plucked it then he put on his hat and ran up to the professor's house with the rays in his hand the daughter of the professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a reel and her little dog was lying at her feet you said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose, cried the student here is the reddest rose in all the world you will wear it tonight next to your heart and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you but the girl frowned I'm afraid it will not go with my dress she answered and besides the chamberlain's nephew sent me some real jewels and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers well, upon my word you are very ungrateful said the student angrily and he threw the rose into the street where it fell into the gutter and a cartwheel went over it ungrateful said the girl I tell you what you are very rude after all, who are you? only a student why I don't believe you've even got silver buckles to your shoes as the chamberlain's nephew has when she got up from her chair and went into the house what a silly thing love is said the student as he walked away it is not half as useful as logic for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen and making one believe things that are not true in fact, it is quite unpractical and as in this age to be practical is everything I shall go back to philosophy and study metaphysics so he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book and began to read End of the Nightingale and the Rose Religion and Love by George William Russell read for Love Stories Volume 1 by Chad Horner from Liverpool this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Religion and Love I've often wondered whether there is something wrong in our religious systems in that the same ritual the same doctrines the same aspirations are held to be sufficient both for men and women the tendency everywhere is to obliterate the distinctions and if a woman be herself she is looked upon unkindly she rarely understands our metaphysics and she gazes on the expinder of the mystery of the logos with enigmatic eyes which reveal the enchantment of another divinity the ancients were wiser than we in this we had Aphrodite and Hera and many another form of the mighty mother who bestowed on women their peculiar graces and powers surely no girl in ancient Greece ever set up to all pervading this a prayer that her natural longings might be fulfilled but we may be sure that to Aphrodite came many such prayers the deities we worship today are too austere for women to approach with their peculiar desires and indeed in Ireland the largest number of our people do not see any necessity for love making at all or what connection spiritual powers have with the affections a girl without repining will follow her four-legged diary to the house of a man she may never have spoken 20 words to before her marriage we praise our women for their virtue but the general acceptance of the marriage as arranged shows so unemotional so undesirable a temperament that it is not to be wondered at one wonders was there temptation what the loss to the race may be it is impossible to say but it is true that beautiful civilizations are billed up by the desire of man to give his beloved all her desires where there is no beloved but only a housekeeper there are no beautiful fancies to create the beautiful arts no spiritual protest against the mean dwelling no hunger build the world anew for her sake our food idea is outcast and with her many of the other immortals have also deported the home life in Ireland is probably more squalid than with any other people equally prosperous in Europe the children begotten without love fill more and more the teeming asylums we are without art literature is despised we have few of those industries which spring up in other countries in response to the desire of women to make gracious influences pervade the home of her partner a desire to which man readily yields and toils to satisfy if he loves truly the desire for beauty has come almost to be regarded as dangerous if not sinful and the woman who is still the natural child of the great mother and priestess of the mysteries if she betrayed the desire to exercise her divinely given powers if there be enchantment in her eyes and her laugh and if she bewildered too many men is in our latest coat of morals distinctly an evil influence the spirit melted and tortured with love which does not achieve its earthly desire is held to have wasted its strength and the judgment which declares the life to be wrecked is equally severe on that which caused this wild conflagration in the heart but the end of life is not the comfort but divine being we do not regard the life which closed in the martyrs fire as ended ignobally the spiritual philosophy which separates human emotions and ideas and declares some to be secular and other spiritual is to blame there is no meditation which if prolonged will not bring us to the same world where religion would carry us and if a flower in the wall will lead us to your knowledge so the understanding of the peculiar nature of one half of humility will bring us far on our journey to the sacred deep I believe it was this wise understanding which in the ancient world declared the embodied spirit a man to be influenced more by the divine mind and in woman by the mighty mother by which nature in its spiritual aspect was understood in this philosophy boundless being when manifested revealed itself in two forms of life spiritual and substance and the endless evolution of its divided race had as its root impulse the desire to return to that boundless being to many ways blindly or half consciously the individual life strives to regain its old fullness the spirit seeks union with nature to pass from the life of vision into pure being and nature conscious that its grosser forms are impermanent is forever dissolving and leading its buttery to a more distant shrine nature is timid like a woman declares an Indian scripture she reveals herself shyly and withdraws again all this metaphysics will not appear out of place if we regard women as influenced beyond herself and our conscious life for spiritual ends I do not enter a defense of the loveless coquette but the woman who has a natural delight in awakening love in men is priestess of a divinity than which there is none mightier among the rulers of the heavens through her eyes, her laugh and in all her motions there is expressed more than she is conscious of herself the mighty mother through the woman is kindling a symbol of herself in the spirit and through that symbol she breathes her sacred life into the heart which is fed from within and is drawn to herself we remember that with Dante the image of a woman became at last the purified fester of his spirit through which the mysteries were revealed we are forever making our souls with effort and pain and shaping them into images which reveal or are voiceless according to their degree and the man whose spirit has been obsessed by a beauty so long brooded upon that which he contemplated owes much to the woman who may never be his and if he or the world understood or right he has no cause of complaint it is the essentially a religious spirit of Ireland which has come to regard love as an unnecessary emotion and the mingling of the sex is as dangerous where it is a curious thing that while we commonly regard ourselves as the most religious people in Europe the reverse is probably true. The country which has never produced spiritual thinkers or religious teachers of him men have heard if we expect Berkeley and perhaps the remote Ioannis, Scotus, Regina cannot pride itself on its spiritual achievement and it might seem even more paradoxical but I think it would be almost equally true to say that the first spiritual note in our literature was struck when a poet generally regarded Pagan wrote it as the aim of his art to reveal in all poor foolish things that live a day eternal beauty wandering on her way. The heavens do not declare the glory of God anymore as do shining eyes nor the firmament show his handiwork more than the woven wind of hair for these were wrought with no lesser love than set the young stars swimming in seas of joyous and primeval air if we drink in the beauty of the night or the mountains it is deemed to be prayers of the maker but if we show an equal adoration of the beauty of man or woman it is dangerous, it is almost wicked of course it is dangerous and without danger there is no passage to eternal things there is the valley of the shadow the side, the pathway of light and it always will be there and the heavens will never be entered by those who shrink from it spirituality is the power of apprehending formless spiritual essences of seeing the eternal in the transitory and in the things which are seen, the unseen things of which they are the shadow I call mystery its poetry spiritual when it declares as in the lines I quoted that there is no beauty so trivial that it is not the shadow of the eternal beauty a country is religious where there is a common belief that all things are instinct with divinity and where the between man and woman is seen as a symbol the highest we have of the union of spirit and nature and their final blending in the boundless being for this reason the lightest desires even the lightest graces of women to have a philosophical value for what suggestions they bring us of the divinity behind them as men and women fail themselves more and more to be sharers of universal aims they will contemplate in each other and in themselves that aspect of the boundless being under whose influence they are cast and will appeal to it for understanding and power time which is forever bringing back the old and renewing it may yet bring back to us some counterpart of aphrodite or Hera as they were understood by the most profound thinkers of the ancient world and women may again have her temples and her mysteries and renew again her radiant life and feel that in seeking for beauty she is growing more into her own ancestral being and that in it shining forth she is giving to man as he may give to her something of that completeness of spirit of which it is written neither is the man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the highest it may seem strange that what is so clear should require statement but it is only with a kind of despair that man or woman of religious mind can contemplate the materialism of our thought about life it is not our natural heritage from the past for the bardic poetry shows that a heaven lay about us in the mystical childhood of our race and a supernatural original was often divine for the great hero or the beautiful woman all this perception has withered away for religion has become observance of rule and adherence to doctrine the first steps to the goal have been made sufficient in themselves but religion is just less unless it has a transforming power unless it is able to turn fishermen into divines to make the blind see and the deaf hear they are no true teachers who cannot rise beyond the world of sense and darkness and awaken the links within us from earth to heaven we cannot see within the heart what are its needs and who have not the power to open the pure blind eyes and touch the ears that have heard no sound of the heavenly harmonies our clergymen do their best to deliver us from what they think is evil but do not lead us into the kingdom they forget that the faculties cannot be spiritualized by restraint but envious and that the greatest evil of all is not to be able to see the divine everywhere in life and love no less than the solemn architecture of the spheres in the free play of the beautiful and natural human relations lie the greatest possibilities of spiritual development where heaven is not prayer nor praise but the fullness of life which is only divine through the richness and variety of life on earth there is a certain infinitude in the emotions of love tenderness, pity, joy and all that is begotten in love and this limitless character of the emotions has never received the philosophical consideration which is due to it for even laughter may be considered solemnly and gaiety and joy in us are the shadowy echoes of that joy spoken of the radiant morning stars and there is not an emotion in man or woman which has not however perverted and muddied in its coming in some way flew from the first fountain we are no more divided from super nature than we are from our own bodies and where the life of man or woman is naturally more intense it most naturally overflows and mingles with the subtler and more lovely world with him religion has no word to say about this it is incomplete and we wonder in the narrow circles of prayers and prayers wondering all the while what is it we are praising God for because we feel so melancholy and lifeless Dante had a place in his inferno for the joyless souls and if his conception be true the population of that circle will be largely modern Irish a reaction against this conventional restraint is setting in and the needs of life will perhaps in the future no longer be violated as they are today and since it is the pent up flood of the joy which ought to be in life which is causing this reaction and since there is a divine root in it it is difficult to say where it might not carry us I hope into some renewal of ancient conceptions of the fundamental purpose of womanhood and its relations to divine nature and that from the temples where woman may be instructed she will come forth with strength in her to resist all pleading until the lover worship in her a divine womanhood and that through their love the divided portions of the immortal nature they come together and be one as before the beginning of the worlds 1904 end of religion and love by George William Russell