Читать книгу The Story Without an End онлайн

8 страница из 11

Then the hyacinth was comforted, and said she would be content; and the Child went on to the powdered auricula, who, in her bashfulness, looked kindly up to him, and would gladly have given him more than kind looks, had she had more to give. But the Child was satisfied with her modest greeting; he felt that he was poor too, and he saw the deep, thoughtful colours that lay beneath her golden dust. But the humble flower of her own accord sent him to her neighbour, the lily, whom she willingly acknowledged as her queen. And when the Child came to the lily, the slender flower waved to and fro, and bowed her pale head with gentle pride and stately modesty, and sent forth a fragrant greeting to him. The Child knew not what had come to him: it reached his inmost heart, so that his eyes filled with soft tears. Then he marked how the lily gazed with a clear and steadfast eye upon the sun, and how the sun looked down again into her pure chalice, and how, amid this interchange of looks, the three golden threads united in the centre. And the Child heard how one scarlet lady-bird at the bottom of the cup, said to another, “knowest thou not that we dwell in the flower of heaven?” and the other replied, “yes, and now will the mystery be fulfilled.” And as the Child saw and heard all this, the dim image of his unknown parents, as it were veiled in a holy light, floated before his eyes: he strove to grasp it, but the light was gone, and the Child slipped, and would have fallen, had not the branch of a currant bushssss1 caught and held him; and he took some of the bright berries for his morning’s meal, and went back to his hut and stripped the little branches.