/lit/ - Literature

I’m in the mood for shilling.

here’s a story by Gilchrist, I feel he doesn’t get enough reads. It’s pretty short.

Would some of you lads read it and tell me how you like it? I love his prose style and his atmosphere.

https://pastebin.com/mcMvYjJi

Alternatively here’s a Dunsany story I put in pastebin, perhaps check that one out instead? It’s also rather short.

https://pastebin.com/d67ck2CU

I love dunsany’s folkloric mythic feel

>Whitman and Housman above Milton, yeats, Dante, Shakespeare, Ovid, keats and Virgil

>crane above Blake

Mfw

A final post, this will be the shortest story in Gilchrist’s the stone dragon, the witch In-grain.

Here is the short story “the witch in-grain” written by gilchrist, please also post some of your favorite obscure short stories

Of late Michal had been much engrossed in the reading of the black-letter books that Philosopher Bale brought from France. As you know I am no Latinist—though one while she was earnest in her desire to instruct me; but the open air had ever greater charms for me than had the dry precincts of a library. So I grudged the time she spent apart, and throughout the spring I would have been all day at her side, talking such foolery as lovers use. But ever she must steal away and hide, herself amongst dead volumes.
Yestereven I crossed the Roods, and entered the garden, to find the girl sitting under a yew-tree. Her face was haggard and her eyes sunken: for the time it seemed as if many years had passed over her head, but somehow the change had only added to her beauty. And I marvelled greatly, but ere I could speak a huge bird, whose plumage was as the brightest gold, fluttered out of her lap from under the silken apron; and looking on her uncovered bosom I saw that his beak had pierced her tender flesh. I cried aloud, and would have caught “the thing, but it rose slowly, laughing like a man, and, beating upwards, passed

out of sight in the quincunx. Then Michal drew long breaths, and her youth came back in some measure. But she frowned, and said, ‘What is it, sweetheart? Why hast awakened me? I dreamed that I fed the Dragon of the Hesperidean Garden.’ Meanwhile, her gaze set on the place whither the bird had flown.
‘Thou hast chosen a filthy mammet,’ I said. ‘Tell me how came it hither?’
She rose without reply, and kissed her hands to the gaudy wings, which were nearing through the trees. Then, lifting up a great tome that had lain at her feet, she turned towards the house. But ere she had reached the end of the maze she stopped, and smiled with strange subtlety. ‘How camest thou hither, O satyr?’ she cried. ‘Even when the Dragon slept, and the fruit hung naked to my touch..... The gates fell to.’ Perplexed and sore adread, I followed to the hall; and found in the herb garden the men struggling with an ancient woman—a foul crone, brown and puckered as a rotten costard. At sight of Michal she thrust out her hands, crying, ‘Save me, mistress!’ The girl cowered, and ran up the perron and indoors. But for me, I questioned Simon, who stood well out of reach of the wretch’s nails, as to the wherefore of this hurly-burly.

His underlings bound the runnion with cords, and haled her to the closet in the banqueting gallery. Then, her beldering being stilled, Simon entreated me to compel Michal to prick her arm. So I went down to the library, and found my sweetheart sitting by the window, tranced with seeing that goblin fowl go tumbling on the lawn.

Cont

The Stone dragon and other tales - Murray gilchrist

Here is the short story “the witch in-grain” written by gilchrist, please also post some of your favorite obscure short stories

Of late Michal had been much engrossed in the reading of the black-letter books that Philosopher Bale brought from France. As you know I am no Latinist—though one while she was earnest in her desire to instruct me; but the open air had ever greater charms for me than had the dry precincts of a library. So I grudged the time she spent apart, and throughout the spring I would have been all day at her side, talking such foolery as lovers use. But ever she must steal away and hide, herself amongst dead volumes.
Yestereven I crossed the Roods, and entered the garden, to find the girl sitting under a yew-tree. Her face was haggard and her eyes sunken: for the time it seemed as if many years had passed over her head, but somehow the change had only added to her beauty. And I marvelled greatly, but ere I could speak a huge bird, whose plumage was as the brightest gold, fluttered out of her lap from under the silken apron; and looking on her uncovered bosom I saw that his beak had pierced her tender flesh. I cried aloud, and would have caught “the thing, but it rose slowly, laughing like a man, and, beating upwards, passed

CONT