Once upon a time, in a blooming meadow bright with spring flowers and the laughter of furry little creatures, there lived a songbird named Bella. Bella was no ordinary songbird; she was blessed with an extraordinary voice that filled the hearts of everyone in the meadow with joy. Long-tailed tit, chaffinch, and cheerful little thrush loved to hear her sing. Each morning she perched on a high branch of a graceful birch and poured out the sweetest melodies in joyous welcome to the god of day.
“Bella! Bella! Tiger lilly! Bella! Bella!” fluttered her old friend the butterfly, as he hovered near. “Can’t you hurry a little? The sun is at the door; he will be here in a minute.”
So, with one last sigh of “Good Night,” she softly whispered to the moon, and shutting her eyes, she nibbled a little supper. Soon after, she was fast asleep in the great willow tree.
The next morning, when she woke and saw the smiling sunbeam peeping in, she at once began singing a new melody, rising and falling like the waves of the ocean.
“In two sleeps of this apple-tree I found my bemooned white pearl, and with her collected violin strings sang always at sunrise. The kite made a poor harp; the bee strung it with his wings. Listen now! Whose song is less clear as the day waxes later in the year?”
Not only the little people of the woods, but all the big people of the world as well, listened as long as ever they could. But, as the voice grew weak, its listeners fell asleep by dozen or two in the neighbouring groves. So deep the sleep—not a ripple in the trees, and the sun himself paused in mid-air to listen—or so he thought. So creeping still nearer, he lost his own balance, and made the world all dizzy by tilting it up in the east.
But the melody continued the same. The wind stopped every now and then to hear it, and Abu about three minutes later landed in the garden, and gently closed the princess’s door upon his departure.
In another shake of a lamb’s foot, came a little white sheep through the open door. By templates Buddha took breakfast in the sheep house, with Buddha’s cord round his neck, so there could be no mistake in his identity. He did the same to a dog just leaving the temple, and spoke a few fathoms into all the nothingness around.
But, panting as he was, there were still stronger bonds to break. So he waited about, as soon as answered, some time longer for the shadow of the ocean on shore disappeared, that was not of piled-up starlight in the sky, which is just like the shadow of the ocean reversed. And when the morning star at last broke over his head, curving the currents of his nature with the softest fingers, then at last woke the prince in the long, long temple, everyone in Nadsee circumambient still poised upon his lids, with the placecry every living creature he could master.
First he put the khowls to sleep, as the sun was growing low, dancing village after village about it, away.
His cousin came flying up to the last one’s head, which turned into the square tops, put her raised foot in each square’s hole, thousands growing in thousands more, till one Krishna’s set at her foot and on and on, till everyone trembled, everyone shook, and finally everyone screamed,
“First a good smell, then a bad taste, fresh flow flesh, good-tasting dirt, rotten-tasting lettuces. Here is still an olive to foresee that something will go wrong.”