“Clematis montana”by Madeleine de Frees

Madeleine de Frees
Blue Dusk (2001)

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From George MacDonald’s “The Light Princess”

Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in love. But how a princess who had no gravity could fall into anything is a difficulty–perhaps THE difficulty. As for her own feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a beehive of honey and stings to be fallen into. But now I come to mention another curious fact about her.

The palace was built on the shores of the loveliest lake in the world, and the princess loved this lake more than father or mother. The root of this preference no doubt, although the princess did not recognise it as such, was, that the moment she got into it, she recovered the natural right of which she had been so wickedly deprived–namely, gravity.

Whether this was owing to the fact that water had been employed as the means of conveying the injury, I do not know. But it is certain that she could swim and dive like the duck that her old nurse said she was.

~ George MacDonald
from Ch. 8 “Try a Drop of Water”
of The Light Princess

The Prince’s Song

“As a world that has no well,
Darting bright in forest dell;
As a world without the gleam
Of the downward-going stream;
As a world without the glance
Of the ocean’s fair expanse;
As a world where never rain
Glittered on the sunny plain;
Such, my heart, thy world would be,
if no love did flow in thee.

As a world without the sound
Of the rivulets underground;
Or the bubbling of the spring
Out of darkness wandering;
Or the mighty rush and flowing
Of the river’s downward going;
Or the music-showers that drop
On the outspread beech’s top;
Or the ocean’s mighty voice,
When his lifted waves rejoice;
Such, my soul, thy world would be,
if no love did sing in thee.

Lady, keep thy world’s delight;
Keep the waters in thy sight.
Love hath made me strong to go,
For thy sake, to realms below,
Where the water’s shine and hum
Through the darkness never come;
Let, I pray, one thought of me Spring,
a little well, in thee;
Lest thy loveless soul be found
Like a dry and thirsty ground.”

George MacDonald
from Ch. 14 “This is Very Kind of You”
of The Light Princess

Illustrations by Dorothy Lathrop

p.s. Read the whole story:
GeorgeMacDonald-TheLightPrincess

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Seeing Things

The Brillantina Project

I see things
no one else sees:

seven seagulls swooping in a circle
over a city street –
the silhouette of rock dove landing on a rooftop
outlined on a plaster wall by the morning sunlight –
a truly tiny hummingbird holding still
in a pomelo tree under a canopy of green leaves.

I hear things
no one else hears:

like the sound of an unknown bird,
startled and crying, when my dog
dashes beyond the fence, searching,
and I can’t explain this moment
any more than I can stop myself from crying
for every man killed in Orlando last week.

Illuminate the eyes of my heart, O God,
and open the ears of my spirit.

---

Jane Beal, PhD

Jane Beal, PhD is the creator many poetry collections, including Sanctuary and Rising, as well as three recording projects: Songs from the Secret Life, Love-Song, and The Jazz Bird

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