The Fairy and the Spring at seligor's castle.com

The Fairy and the Spring. Here in Seligor's Castle

THE FAIRY AND THE SPRING

She stands on ground above an ice-bound spring,
A little, silent, frozen, fairy thing.
Watching and waiting, with an outstretched hand
Holding her frozen wand.

How comes she there? Indeed I cannot tell;
She stands as if enchanted by a spell;
The snow around is still as still can be,
But not more still than she.


Perhaps she loved the little dancing spring
And came the summer through to hear it sing;
And played with it, and watched it leap and run
And sparkle in the sun.


And when King Winter strode across the land,
And stilled the water with his icy hand
And bought its happy laighter to an end,
She would not leave her friend.

But stayed beside it, knowing very well
She too must fall at last beneath the spell,
And stand for days and nights of bitter chill
All dumb and cold and still.


Yet very soon the winter will be done
And very soon the friendly, smiling sun
Will melt away the icy bonds at last
Which hold them both so fast.

Then will she will shake her wings and move about
And call her watery friend to hasten out
And they will dance again and laugh and sing -
The Fairy and the Spring.

By Rose Fyleman...

She was born in Nottingham on 6 March 1877, the third child of John Feilmann and his wife, Emilie, née Loewenstein, who was of Russian extraction. Her father was in the lace trade, and the family were Jews who had come from Jever in Oldenburg in Germany in 1860.

She died at a nursing home in St. Albans on 1 August 1957