The Wild Swans

Once upon a time, in a kingdom of the shore

A wicked witch queen out of envious spite

turned her eleven stepsons into swans, wherefore

Elisa the dolorous sister drifted away in a plight

Till she chanced upon the fairy queen in her chariot

Who saw the golden heart of the princess that moved

The fairy caprice and told her with thorny nettles to knit

Shirts for the swans to break the spells with her lips sealed;

Such was Elisa’s vow, and the vow took her to her encounter

With a gallant beauteous king of the strange land faraway

Falling for her silent beauty, keeping her in his chamber of amour;

But the zealous archbishop and his ilk viciously sent her away

To a stake for witchery, for her silence was otherworldly;

As the ambers of fire were bursting around her fast and faster

The swans with crowns appeared in the dusky sky from the yonder

And Elisa threw the shirts at the swans, and lo! the men stood there;

Then the fiery fires blossomed into pretty white flowers around Elisa

Lying on the bed of the flowers, which the king plucked and placed

Upon his lover’s bosoms with drops from his welkin eyes, whereupon

Her spirit returned from a departure to the ether exalted, elated

By the end of the old and the beginning of a new life in the kingdom

Where there’s no other world beyond the lovers’ union heart-to-heart. 

 

P.S: One of my favorite fairytales of all time is “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Andersen because of the travails that the princess Elisa endured for the love of her brothers and her fathomless patience akin to that of martyrs of the early Church in spite of unthinkable pains of horrendous tortures and gruesome ways of execution for their unswerving faith. What’s more, I love the fact that the king was not only infatuated with her external beauty but also her internal virtue distinguished from all other beautiful women who would vie for his kingly attention. Their love was no less glorious than that of Romeo and Juliet, for the king loved her for the dangers she had passed, and she loved him that he loved all about her, still and ever. Hence this is my contribution to #FairytaleTuesday whose theme for today is a fairytale with an element of lovers in love on Twitter.