Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures/Various
| VI | VARIOUS |
 |
| 37 | CUPID’S ALLEY |
“O, Love’s but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle! See the couples advance,— O, Love’s but a dance! A whisper, a glance— ‘Shall we twirl down the middle?’ O, Love’s but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle! *** “Strange Dance! ’Tis free to Rank and Rags: Here no distinction flatters, Here riches shakes its money-bags, And Poverty its tatters: Church, Army, Navy, Physic, Law;— Maid, Mistress, Master, Valet; Long locks, grey hairs, bald heads, and a’,— They bob—in ‘Cupid’s Alley.’” Austin Dobson The picture is in the National Gallery of British Art. | |
| 38 | A COURT IN THE ALHAMBRA |
| 39 | BASTINADO |
| 40 | THE FAIRY WIFE |
| “In a mild and steady light, which came from no illumination of moon or stars, but seemed to be interfused with the air, in the strong, warm wind which wrapped the fell-top upon a sward of bent grass which ran toward the tarn and ended in swept reeds, he saw six young women dancing in a ring. Not to any music that he could hear did they move, nor was the rhythm of their movement either ordered or wild. It was not formal dancing, and it was not at all a Bacchic rout: rather they flitted hither and thither on the turf, now touching hands, now straining heads to one another, crossing, meeting, parting, winding about and about with the purposeless and untirable frivolity of moths. They seemed neither happy nor unhappy, they made no sound; it looked to the lad as if they had been so drifting from the beginning, and would so drift to the end of things temporal.
**** “ . . . . then, circling round him, they swept him forward on the wind, past Silent Water, over the Edge, out on to the fells, on and on and on, and never stopped till they had reached Knapp Forest, that dreadful place. “There, in the hushed aisles and glades, they played with this new found creature—played with him, fought for him, and would have loved him if he had been minded for such adventuring. **** “Andrew King, like young Tamlane, might have sojourned with them for ever and a day but for one thing. He saw by chance a seventh maiden—a white-faced, woebegone, horror-struck Seventh Sister, blenched and frozen under a great beech. She may have been there throughout his commerce with the rest, or she may have been revealed to him in a flash then and there. So as it was, he saw her suddenly, and thereafter saw no other at all. She held his eyes waking; he left his playmates and went to her, where she crouched.” | |
| 41 | THE SIGNAL |
| 42 | BUTTERFLIES |
| 43 | HAULING TIMBER |
| 44 | THE REGENT’S CANAL |
37 Cupid’s Alley
38 A Court in the Alhambra
39 Bastinado
40 The Fairy Wife
41 The Signal
42 Butterflies
43 Hauling Timber
44 The Regent’s Canal
