Wednesday, August 15, 2007

A Planet Story

"At his feet I noticed,...a girl in a loose coral pink gown, who was his very antipode. Princess Heru, for so she was called, was resting one arm upon his knee at our approach and pulling a blue convolvulus bud to pieces—a charming picture of dainty idleness. Anything so soft, so silky as that little lady was never seen before.Who am I, a poor, quarter-deck loafer, that I should attempt to describe what poet and painter alike would have failed to realise? I know, of course, your stock descriptives: the melting eye, the coral lip, the peachy cheek, the raven tresses; but these were coined for mortal woman—and this was not one of them. I will not attempt to describe the glorious tenderness of those eyes she turned upon me presently; the glowing radiance of her skin; the infinite grace of every action; the incredible soul-seaching harmony of her voice, when later on I heard it—you must gather something of these things as I go- suffice it to say that when I saw her there for the first time in the plenitude of her beauty, I fell desperately, wildly in love with her."


—Edwin Lester Arnold, Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (a.k.a., Gullivar of Mars).

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