Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Descent of Glund-Oyarsa

"Before the other angels a man might sink, before this he might die, but if he lived at all, he would laugh. If you had caught one breath of the air that came from him, you would have felt yourself taller than before. Though you were a cripple, your walk would have become stately: though a beggar, you would have worn your rags magnanimously. Kingship and power and festal pomp and courtesy shot from him as sparks fly from an anvil. The pealing of bells, the blowing of trumpets, the spreading out of banners, are means used on earth to make a faint symbol of his quality. It was like a long sunlit wave, creamy-crested and arched with emerald, that comes on nine feet tall, with roaring and with terror and unquenchable laughter. It was like the first beginning of music in the halls of some King so high and at some festival so solemn that a tremor akin to fear runs throught young hearts when they hear it. For this was great Glund-Oyarsa, King of Kings, through whom the joy of creation principally blows across these fields of Arbol, known to men in old times as Jove, and under that name, by fatal but not inexplicable misprision, confused with his Maker--so little did thy dream by how many degrees the stair even of created being rises above him."

You don't get much better than that.

1 comment:

thebeloved said...

OH, Yes, great quote. Which one in the Space Trilogy is this from? "That Hideous Strength"?