【英文小说】The Pearl of Love

1、【英文小说】The Pearl of Love Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition The pearl is lovelier than the most brilliant of crystalline stones, themoralist declares, because it is made through the suffering of a livingcreature. About that I can say nothing because I feel none of thefascination of pearls. Their cloudy lustre

2、 moves me not at all. Nor canI decide for myself upon that agelong dispute whether The Pearl of Loveis the cruellest of stories or only a gracious fable of the immortalityof beauty. Both the story and the controversy will be familiar to students ofmediaeval Persian prose. The story is a short one, though the commentaryupon it is a respectable part of the literature of that period. Theyhave treated it as a poetic invention and they have treated it as anallegory meaning this, that, or the other th

3、ing. Theologians have hadtheir copious way with it, dealing with it particularly as concerningthe restoration of the body after death, and it has been greatly used asa parable by those who write about aesthetics. And many have held it tobe the statement of a fact, simply and baldly true.The story is laid in North India, which is the most fruitful soil forsublime love stories of all the lands in the world. It was in a countryof sunshine and lakes and rich forests and hills and fertile valleys;and

4、 far away the great mountains hung in the sky, peaks, crests, andridges of inaccessible and eternal snow. There was a young prince, lordof all the land; and he found a maiden of indescribable beauty anddelightfulness and he made her his queen and laid his heart at her feet.Love was theirs, full of joys and sweetness, full of hope, exquisite,brave and marvellous love, beyond anything you have ever dreamt of love.It was theirs for a year and a part of a year; and then suddenly,because of some veno

5、mous sting that came to her in a thicket, she died.She died and for a while the prince was utterly prostrated. He wassilent and motionless with grief. They feared he might kill himself, andhe had neither sons nor brothers to succeed him. For two days and nightshe lay upon his face, fasting, across the foot of the couch which boreher calm and lovely body. Then he arose and ate, and went about veryquietly like one who has taken a great resolution. He caused her body tobe put in a coffin of lead mi

6、xed with silver, and for that he had anouter coffin made of the most precious and scented woods wrought withgold, and about that there was to be a sarcophagus of alabaster, inlaidwith precious stones. And while these things were being done he spenthis time for the most part by the pools and in the garden-houses andpavilions and groves and in those chambers in the palace where they twohad been most together, brooding upon her loveliness. He did not rendhis garments nor defile himself with ashes a

7、nd sackcloth as the customwas, for his love was too great for such extravagances. At last he cameforth again among his councillors and before the people, and told themwhat he had a mind to do.He said he could never more touch woman, he could never more think ofthem, and so he would find a seemly youth to adopt for his heir andtrain him to his task, and that he would do his princely duties asbecame him; but that for the rest of it, he would give himself with allhis power and all his strength and

8、all his wealth, all that he couldcommand, to make a monument worthy of his incomparable, dear, lostmistress. A building it should be of perfect grace and beauty, moremarvellous than any other building had ever been or could ever be, sothat to the end of time it should be a wonder, and men would treasure itand speak of it and desire to see it and come from all the lands of theearth to visit and recall the name and the memory of his queen. And thisbuilding he said was to be called the Pearl of Lov

9、e.And this his councillors and people permitted him to do, and so he did.Year followed year and all the years he devoted himself to building andadorning the Pearl of Love. A great foundation was hewn out of theliving rock in a place whence one seemed to be looking at the snowywilderness of the great mountain across the valley of the world.Villages and hills there were, a winding river, and very far away threegreat cities. Here they put the sarcophagus of alabaster beneath apavilion of cunning workmanship; and about it there were set pillars ofstrange and lovely stone and wrought and fretted walls, and a greatcasket of masonry bearing a dome and pinnacles and cupolas, as exquisiteas a jewel. At first the design of the Pearl of Love was less bold andsubtle than it became later. At first it was smaller and more wroughtand encrusted; there were many pierced screens and delicate clusters ofrosy-hued pillars, and the sarcophagus lay like a chi

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