Moonshine & Clover

by Laurence Housman

But afterwards, when they ceased, came sorrow.

Now, when the Prince woke he was in his own bed; and he rose much puzzled by the dream which had seemed so true. Then there came to him one of his pages who said, "There was a strange bird flying over the palace about dawn, and a watchman on the high tower shot it; so I have brought it for you to see." And as he spoke, the page showed him the Green Bird lying dead between his hands.

The Prince took it without a word, and kissed it before them all, afterwards burying it where the white lilies full of gold fishes grew, wherein he had first seen the image of its green breast fly. And as he stood sorrowing, the garden faded before his eyes, and a cold wind blew; and the palace which had its foundations on happiness crumbled away into ruin; and heaven came down kissing the earth and making it white.

He opened his hand and found in it three grains of seed, and then he knew that some of his dream was really coming to pass. For he saw the whole world was turning white before his eyes, all the trees and the grass; therefore he sowed the first grain of seed over the little grave that he had made, and set out over hill and dale to fulfil the dream that the Green Bird had given him. "But the Green Bird I shall see no more!" he said, and wept.

For a year he went on through a waste and desolate country, meeting no man, nor discovering any sign. Till one day as he was coming down a mountain he saw at the bottom a hut with a round roof like a great tortoise; and when he got quite near, out of the door came a small white hand, palm upward, feeling to know if it rained. All at once he remembered the word of the Green Bird, and as he dropped the second seed into the ground it seemed to him that he heard again the three notes of its song.

A young girl looked out of the hut; "What do you want?" she said when she saw the Prince. He saw her eyes, how blue and smiling they were, and it seemed as if he had dreamed of them once. "Let me stay here for a little," he said, "and rest." "If you will rest one day and work the next, you may," she answered. So he rested that day, and the next he worked at her bidding in a small patch of ground that was before the hut.

When the day was over and he had returned to the hut for the night, he looked again at the young girl, and seeing how beautiful she was, said, "Why are you here all alone, with no one to protect you?" And she answered, "I have come from my own country, which is very far away, in search of a beautiful Green Bird which while it was mine I loved greatly, and which one day flew away promising to return. When you came, something made me think the bird was with you, but perhaps to-morrow it will return." At that the Prince sighed in his heart, for he knew that the bird was dead. Then also she told him how in her own country she had been a Princess; so now she from whom the Green Bird had flown, and he to whom it had come, were living there together like beggars in a hut.

For a whole year he toiled and waited, hoping for the second seed to sprout; and at last one day, just where he had planted it, he saw a little spring rising out of the ground. When the Princess saw it, she clapped her hands, "Oh," she cried, "it is the sign I have waited for! If we follow it, it will take us to the Green Bird." But the Prince sighed, for in his heart he knew that the Green Bird was dead.

Yet he let her take his hand, and they two went on following the course of the spring till they came to a wild desolate place full of ruins; and as soon as they came to it the spring disappeared into the ground.

Then the Prince began to look about him, and saw that he was standing once more in the land that he had lost, above the very spot in the enchanted garden where he had buried the Green Bird and sorrowed over it. Then he stooped down, and set the last grain of seed into the ground; and as he did so, surely from below the soil came the three sweet notes of a song! Then all at once the earth opened and out of it grew a tree, tall and green and waving, and out of the midst of the tree flew the Green Bird with its nest in its beak.