The Goblin Market

A little snippet from the most moving piece of literature I've ever read on love, sacrifice, and going from death to life (besides the Bible).

Read whole thing here: http://plexipages.com/reflections/goblin.html

"...Laura started from her chair,
Flung her arms up in the air,
Clutched her hair:
"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted
For my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing,
And ruined in my ruin;
Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?"
She clung about her sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast.
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins, knocked at her heart,
Met the fire smouldering there
And overbore its lesser flame,
She gorged on bitterness without a name:
Ah! fool, to choose such part
Of soul-consuming care!
Sense failed in the mortal strife:
Like the watch-tower of a town
Which an earthquake shatters down,
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
Spun about,
Like a foam-topped water-spout
Cast down headlong in the sea,
She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life ?

Life out of death.
That night long Lizzie watched by her,
Counted her pulse's flagging stir,
Felt for her breath,
Held water to her lips, and cooled her face
With tears and fanning leaves:
But when the first birds chirped about their eaves,
And early reapers plodded to the place
Of golden sheaves,
And dew-wet grass
Bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,
And new buds with new day
Opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,
Laura awoke as from a dream,
Laughed in the innocent old way,
Hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;
Her gleaming locks showed not one thread of gray,
Her breath was sweet as May,
And light danced in her eyes..."

When a Fish Becomes a Bird

You are the fearless wisdom-bird
Who flies to songs of things unheard
Spiraling through the air in flight
Darting from the highest height,

You bend your beak to the pale blue sea
And dedicate yourself to it.
You fly above and help the fish
Discover their own wings to fit
Your great adventure in the sky
Staring we're left mesmerized,
Daring to take off in flight
And leave the things we know behind.

It's crazy for a fish to pass
An eagle in the atmosphere,
But that's the way we want to live,
Weighing risk the way you did
When you were young and just like us,
A fish who marveled to become
A feathered wisdom-bearing eye,
Dodging thunder in the sky.

The snappers, turtles, bass, and trout
Forgot their dreams of finding out
"How does a fish become a bird?"
The whole thing seems, to them, absurd,
But now we feel the waters brim
Is closer than it's ever been
Convention's call is fading dim and
Our ears are tuned to violent hymns,

Those symphonies that make us sing
Will bind our gills and fins and bring
Us out see the light of morning,
Brighter sun and fiercer glory.
Remembering the things we left,
But never looking back at them
We start to breathe in deeper breaths
Of some angelic oxygen.

And after we have lived and gathered
Stories up in our rundown feathers
We, like you, will find the sea
Again and help the fish to dream
Of finding hidden symphonies, the
Answers to uncanny things,
And all that makes a fish become
A bird when it would seem absurd.