John Buchan 
The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies 

The Moon Endureth by John Buchan is a collection of tales and fancies, in prose and verse, which were originally published in Blackwood’s Magazine. It includes From the Pentlands looking North and South, The Company of the Marjolaine, Avignon 1759, Lucid Interval, The Shorter Catechism (revised version), The Lemnian, Atta’s song, Space, Stocks and Stones, Streams of Water in the South, The Gipsy’s song to the lady Cassilis, The Grove of Ashtaroth, Wood magic, The riding of Ninemileburn, Plain Folk, The Kings of Orion, Babylon, The Green Glen, The Wise Years, Updater’s note: Chapter 9 missing from etext], and The Rime of True Thomas. According to Wikipedia, ‘John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (26 August 1875 – 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada. Buchan’s 100 works include nearly thirty novels, seven collections of short stories and biographies of Sir Walter Scott, Caesar Augustus, and Oliver Cromwell. Buchan’s most famous of his books were the spy thrillers (including) The 39 Steps (which was converted to a play as well as an Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, though with Buchan’s story much altered.) The ‘last Buchan’ (as Graham Greene entitled his appreciative review) was the 1941 novel Sick Heart River (American title: Mountain Meadow), in which a dying protagonist confronts in the Canadian wilderness the questions of the meaning of life. The insightful quotation ‘It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken’ is famously attributed to Buchan, as is ‘No great cause is ever lost or won, The battle must always be renewed, And the creed must always be restated.’