After the shower was over, a lovely rainbow, made of the purest rays of heavenly light, arched across the sky. It was the last greeting of a love so great that it could serve.
Soon the rainbow, too, disappeared, but the memory of the blessing which the shower had brought to the earth was kept in the hearts of men for many years to come.
UNDINE
Edward Abbott Parry
Once upon a time there was a child wave named Undine. "Undine the Beautiful," they called her, because, when she was quite a little ripple, she sparkled more brilliantly than any of her thousand brothers and sisters, and not one of them was so crystal clear or dressed in such wonderful shades of sapphire blue and emerald green. She was born at the mouth of a white limestone rock cave on the coast of Devonshire. The fourteenth of August was her birthday. Never had there been such a lovely little ripple as Undine. The old Tide let her run up and down on his back when he came into the bay where she lived. She kept close by the cave for a time, and grew big and strong, and became first a billow and then a wavelet; but when a month had passed she was a full-grown wave—only a small one, of course, but still a wave.
Her father was a well known Devonshire coast wave, a jolly compact old sea salt roller, with a great thatch of creamy foam on his head. He ran up and down the coast and out to sea in a lazy, aimless kind of way, playing with the fishing smacks and rolling over the porpoises.
He had a kindly look and was a friendly fellow as a rule, but could be as cruel and fierce as the worst of them, when he was roused. Old Lobster-Pot they called him, because he loved, when he could, to dive down and wash the lobsters out of their baskets, and then come and dance round the fishermen's boats in the morning when they pulled them up, and laugh at them when they found all their hard work had been for nothing.
Undine's mother was a tall, graceful wave with a beautiful green breast, on which she rested her white surge head proudly like a royal swan. Her name was Mora. She thought it vulgar to play with the lobster-pots, and when her children were old enough she took them across the sea to stay at the French seaside towns for the bathing season. She liked to hear the people on the pier cry out, "Oh! look at that lovely wave!" as she held back her glorious head and rushed through the girders of the pier, splashing and sparkling in the sun, and followed by her merry family tumbling headlong after her.
Little Undine saw nothing of her mother and father during the first months of her life. She never went outside the bay, but rippled up and down in front of a large cave, diving under the ruddy golden seaweed to look at the quiet sea anemones. They were wonderful fellows, she thought. Even the youngest of them could sit still for hours. You never saw sea anemones fidgeting about, and as for turning head over heels, they do not even think of it. But Undine was a restless young thing, full of life and spirits, never still for a moment; and the sea anemones loved her, for she was always gentle and kind to them. Ah! those were happy times!
The old waves like to go voyaging about and to see something of the wide world, so they are sensible enough to pack their children off to school as soon as they are born. The ripples have a class to themselves. They are taught to walk in rows, and each one learns to keep his place. You cannot teach a ripple much more than that, but that is something. There was a wave school in the bay in which Undine lived. The Zephyr taught the ripple class. They went every morning at sunrise, and had drill in a pool behind the rocks. It was a pretty sight. The sea anemones, red and white, opened out on the rocks to look on, lazy star-fishes stretched themselves upon the sands and laughed when the little ripples tried to move them higher up the beach, even those snarly little periwinkles peeped out of their black shells to see what was going on, and the old hermit crab, grumbling all the while at being roused up so early, sat at the door of his shell, and beat time to the marching with one of his claws.
"One, two, three, four," said the gentle Zephyr. "Heads up! Keep your place! Let the little ripples have plenty of room. Now, Undine, dear, throw your shadow well forward."