"Puck of Pook's Hill"

[fiefoe]

Did George R. R. Martin read Kipling too? Too bad he doesn't seem to have the same sense for a neat ending.

• 'Schoolroom,' said Dan quickly, and Una flushed, because they had made a solemn treaty that summer not to call the schoolroom the nursery anymore.
• the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days.
• They were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things.
• After a while, men simply left the Old Things alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old Things had to scuttle out and pick up a living.
• Thy teeth are far apart, which is a sure sign thou wilt travel and grow.
• When it rose beyond measure he brake a pot of whale's oil upon the water, which wonderfully smoothed it, and in that anointed patch he turned her head to the wind and threw out oars at the end of a rope, to make, he said, an anchor at which we lay rolling sorely.
• Knighthood is for the land. At sea, look you, a man is but a spurless rider on a bridleless horse.
• I was afraid to my four bones' marrow / those new-fashioned beads for counting of prayers
• 'They tell me that Witta's Wise Iron was a toy. The boy carries such an iron with him. They tell me our Devils were apes, called gorillas!' said Sir Richard, indignantly. 'That is the sorcery of books,'
• '"After the spur, corn," said De Aquila, and he threw Fulke three wedges of gold that he had taken from our little chest.
• Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die. But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth, The Cities rise again.
• Legion's pace is altogether different. It is a long, slow stride, that never varies from sunrise to sunset. "Rome's Race—Rome's Pace," as the proverb says. Twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less.
• Think of it! One roaring, rioting, cock-fighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from Ituna on the West to Segedunum on the cold eastern beach! On one side heather, woods and ruins where Picts hide, and on the other, a vast town—long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. Yes, a snake basking beside a warm wall!
• For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.
• He pointed to a smoke far off on a hill-top, ascending in what we call the Picts' Call:—Puff—double-puff: double-puff—puff! They make it by raising and dropping a wet hide on a fire.
• always risk one's life, or one's soul, or one's peace—or some little thing.
• Write his name on these tablets—on the red side; the other is for the living!" and Maximus held out his tablets.
• Now I saw so strongly what things were needed to be done, that I forgot things are only accomplished by means of men.
• If you wait till you see her men gather up the sail's foot, your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones (bolts only cut through the cloth) into the bag of it. Then she turns over, and the sea makes everything clean again.
• We barbarians are all alike. We sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman says.
• '"In War it is as it is in Love," said Pertinax. "Whether she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one only. That given, there remains no second worth giving or taking.
• Mistletoe killing an oak— Rats gnawing cables in two— Moths making holes in a cloak— How they must love what they do!
• He dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of Puck's rugged face, that had been but faintly revealed by the silver-point.
• 'Oh, we know all about that,' said Una pertly. 'If you get too beany—that's cheeky—you get sat upon.
• I could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! / fur, or feather, or fin
• 'A King without gold is a snake with a broken back.'
• We Jews know how the earth's gold moves with the seasons, and the crops, and the winds; circling and looping and rising and sinking away like a river—a wonderful underground river.
• Again I heard them weigh out peace and war / How can a man be wise if he hate?
• The more we physicians know, the less do we do. Only the fool says: "I dare."
• 'Well,' said Puck calmly, 'what did you think of it? Weland gave the Sword! The Sword gave the Treasure, and the Treasure gave the Law. It's as natural as an oak growing.'