The World’s Desire
By Andrew Lang
Across the broad backs of the waves, beneath the mountains, and between the islands, a ship came stealing from the dark into the dusk and from the dusk into the dawn. The boat had but one mast, one broad brown sail with a star embroidered in gold; her stem and stern were built high and curved like a bird’s beak; her prow was painted scarlet, and oars and the western wind drove her. A man stood alone on the half-deck at the bows, always looking forward through the night, the twilight, and the clear morning.
He was of no great stature but broad-breasted and wide-shouldered, with many signs of strength. He had blue eyes, dark curled locks falling beneath a red cap like sailors’ wear and over a purple cloak fastened with a gold brooch. There were threads of silver in his curls, and his beard was flecked with white. His whole heart followed his eyes, watching first for the blaze of the island beacons out of the darkness and, later, for the smoke rising from the far-off hills.
But he watched in vain; neither light nor smoke on the grey peak lay clear against a field of yellow sky. There was no smoke, fire, the sound of voices, or cry of birds. The isle was deadly still. As they neared the coast and neither heard nor saw a sign of life, the man’s face fell. The gladness went out of his eyes. His features grew older with anxiety and doubt and with longing for tidings of his home.
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Andrew Lang
Lang was born in 1844 in Selkirk, Scottish Borders.
Biography.
He was the eldest of the eight children born to John Lang, the town clerk of Selkirk, and his wife Jane Plenderleath Sellar, the daughter of Patrick Sellar, factor to the first Duke of Sutherland.
On 17 April 1875, he married Leonora Blanche Alleyne, the youngest daughter of C. T. Alleyne of Clifton and Barbados. She was (or should have been) variously credited as the author, collaborator, or translator of Lang’s Color/Rainbow Fairy Books, which he edited. He was educated at Selkirk Grammar School, Loretto School, and the Edinburgh Academy, as well as the University of St Andrews and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first class in the final classical schools in 1868, becoming a fellow and subsequently honorary fellow of Merton College. He soon made a reputation as one of the most able and versatile writers of the day as a journalist, poet, critic, and historian. He was a member of the Order of the White Rose, a Neo-Jacobite society that attracted many writers and artists in the 1890s and 1900s. In 1906, he was elected FBA.
He died of angina pectoris on 20 July 1912 at the Tor-na-Coille Hotel in Banchory, Banchory, survived by his wife. He was buried in the cathedral precincts at St Andrews, where a monument can be visited in the southeast corner of the 19th-century section.
Andrew Lang
