Chapter 1"The studio was filled with a rich odour of roses, and when the light
summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came
through the open door a heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate
perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was
lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry
Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and
honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches
seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like
as theirs;and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight
flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched
in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary
Japanese effect, and making him think of pallid jade-faced painters
of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily
immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through
the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence
round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed
to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of
London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ."
0 comments:
Post a Comment