‘This is the great Pathway of Expectation, as the hill people say, where you may realize your hopes just by hoping them. The Chinese call it the Baghdad Highway, and the Persians and Hindus know it as the Silk Trail, but we call it the Golden Road.’ And he quoted a verse which, with considerable trouble, I’ve turned into rhyming English:
To learn the age-old lesson day by day:
It is not in the bright arrival planned,
But in the dreams men dream along the way,
They find the Golden Road to Samarkand.
Flashman at the Charge, pp.286-7, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.
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