Mythical Creatures

"A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature — swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song."

"It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game."

"Here sits the Unicorn In captivity; His bright invulnerability Captive at last"

"Here sits the Unicorn In captivity, Yet free."

"He could leap the corral, If he rose To his full height; He could splinter the fencing light, With three blows Of his porcelain hoofs in flight — If he chose. He could shatter his prison wall, Could escape them all — If he rose, If he chose."

"Here sits the Unicorn; The wounds in his side Still bleed"

"Dream wounds, dream ties Do not bind him there In a kingdom where He is unaware Of his wounds, of his snare."

"Here sits the Unicorn; Leashed by a chain of gold To the pomegranate tree. So light a chain to hold So fierce a beast; Delicate as a cross at rest On a maiden's breast. He could snap the golden chain With one toss of his mane, If he chose to move, If he chose to prove His liberty. But he does not choose What choice would lose. He stays, the Unicorn, In captivity."

"Yet look again — His horn is free, Rising above chain, fence, and tree, Free hymn of love; His horn Bursts from his tranquil brow Like a comet born; Cleaves like a galley's prow Into seas untorn; Springs like a lily, white From the Earth below; Spirals, a bird in flight To a longed-for height; Or a fountain bright, Spurting to light Of early morn — O luminous horn!"

"Here sits the Unicorn — In captivity? In repose."

"Forgotten the strife; Now the need to kill Has died like fire, And the need to love Has replaced desire"

"Quiet, the Unicorn, In contemplation stilled, With acceptance filled; Quiet, save for his horn; Alive in his horn; Horizontally, In captivity; Perpendicularly, Free."

"I think every little girl's dream is to be a mermaid or to see a mermaid. [When I was younger] I would go to the beach and cover myself in the sand. People from different cultures and centuries have the same idea of what mermaids are... so that's maybe a cool thing to think about."

"I must be a mermaid... I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living."

"A mermaid found a swimming lad Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown."

"Slow sail'd the weary mariners and saw, Betwixt the green brink and the running foam, Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest To little harps of gold; and while they mused Whispering to each other half in fear, Shrill music reach'd them on the middle sea."

"Who would be A mermaid fair, Singing alone, Combing her hair Under the sea, In a golden curl With a comb of pearl, On a throne? I would be a mermaid fair; I would sing to myself the whole of the day; With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair; And still as I comb I would sing and say, "Who is it loves me? who loves not me?""

"Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song: And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's music."

"O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears."

"To aid your toils, to scatter death, Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force, When the keen north-wind's freezing breath Spreads desolation in its course, My soul within this icy sea, Fulfils her fearful destiny. Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait To lead the victims to their fate; With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy, And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy."

"Today's mermaids are fun-loving and friendly. The frightening, destroyer sirens of the past have been ousted in favor of pleasure-seeking playmates. Their youthful abandon, grace and sense of freedom invite us to lighten up. They remind us to enjoy life and glide through the waters of life, rather than struggling. Perhaps these bathing beauties are just what we need now to help us escape from the stress of the modern world and our anxiety about the future."

"Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers, and shades of night."

"This is the fairy-land; O spite of spites! We talk with goblins, owls and sprites."

"The dances ended, all the fairy train For pinks and daisies search'd the flow'ry plain."

"The weakness of the attack lies in its lack of discrimination. It is possible that psychic surgery is a hoax, that plants cannot really read our minds, that Kirlian photography (photographing the "life-aura" of living creatures) may depend on some simple electrical phenomenon. But to lump all of these together as if they were all on the same level of improbability shows a certain lack of discernment. The same applies to the list of "hoaxes." Rhine's careful research into extrasensory perception at Duke University is generally conceded to be serious and sincere, even by people who think his test conditions were too loose. The famous fairy photographs are quite probably a hoax, but no one has ever produced an atom of proof either way, and until someone does, no one can be quite as confident as the editors of Time seem to be. And Ted Serios has never at any time been exposed as a fraud — although obviously he might be. We see here a phenomena that we shall encounter again in relation to Geller: that when a scientist or a "rationalist" sets himself up as the defender of reason, he often treats logic with a disrespect that makes one wonder what side he is on."

"But light as any wind that blows So fleetly did she stir, The flower, she touch'd on, dipt and rose, And turned to look at her."

"Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew And her conception of the joyous prime."

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly."

"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman."

"In silence sad, Trip we after night's shade: We the globe can compass soon. Swifter than the wand'ring moon."

"Set your heart at rest: The fairyland buys not the child of me."

"They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die: I'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye."

"Or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

"I took it for a faery vision Of some gay creatures of the element, That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play i' th' plighted clouds."

"The pretty game of calling on the children of the audience of "Peter Pan" to declare their faith in fairies seemed to me disastrous—a game of men and women at the expense of children, a cumbersome frolic at best and an artificial, a tyrannous use of the adult sense of sentimental humour against the helpless. I could with better conscience use my superior physical strength upon them than exploit them for love of my own condescension. (And yet Sir J. Barrie has written the most adorable "pretending" story ever written about a child.)No, children love a fairy story not because they think it true, but because they think it untrue, and because it makes no fraudulent appeal to their excellent good sense. That sense they are delighted to put aside while they "pretend." That is their own word.[…] "Let's pretend," not "Let's believe." Their mother does not put "Let's pretend" into the child's mouth; she finds it there. Without it there is no play. But the pretending is always drama and never deception or self-deception."

"It may well be doubted whether children are generally credulous.{…] For children do not believe in fairies a jot. I have just asked my youngest daughter whether she believed in them, and she said "Of course not—only I liked the stories." Fiction to children is fiction and not fact."

"It is for fear of the grown-up, or at least out of respect towards them, that a chapter must be given to fairies. If the children do not care very much for fairies, they must be made to care. "Who is to care if they do not? Who is to be properly childlike if they are not?""

"Nicht die Kinder bloss speist man mit Märchen ab."

"Most nature-spirits dislike and avoid mankind, and we cannot wonder at it. To them man appears a ravaging demon, destroying and spoiling wherever he goes... He wantonly kills, often with awful tortures, all the beautiful creatures that they love to watch; he cuts down the trees, he tramples the grass, he plucks the flowers and casts them carelessly aside to die; he replaces all the lovely wild life of nature with his hideous bricks and mortar, and the fragrance of the flowers with the mephitic vapours of his chemicals and the all polluting smoke of his factories. Can we think it strange that the fairies should regard us with horror, and shrink away from us as we shrink from a poisonous reptile? p. 143"

"Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams."

"Then take me on your knee, mother; And listen, mother of mine. A hundred fairies danced last night, And the harpers they were nine."

"There are fairies at the bottom of our garden! It's not so very, very far away; You pass the gardener's shed and you just keep straight ahead— I do so hope they've really come to stay.[…]The King is very proud and very handsome, The Queen—now can you guess who that could be (She's a little girl all day, but at night she steals away)? Well—it's ME!"

"Faeries lead us astray to show us the way."

"This is not the considered dogma of schoolmen or of sages in council, but the whirring utterance of a poet, and it is with some such answer that we must affirm our belief in the fairy world. For this belief […] is so inconsiderable that it will never harden into a creed; so tiny and humble a thing that the wise of this world have never tried to preserve it as a talisman or to use it as an artificial symbol of contention. So that it has been left from the beginning to grow free like the daisies, and children from the morning of time have woven it into happy coronals and into flower-chains."

"Bright Eyes, Light Eyes! Daughter of a Fay! I had not been a married wife a twelvemonth and a day, I had not nursed my little one a month upon my knee, When down among the blue bell banks rose elfins three times three: They griped me by the raven hair, I could not cry for fear, They put a hempen rope around my waist and dragged me here; They made me sit and give thee suck as mortal mothers can, Bright Eyes, Light Eyes! strange and weak and wan!"

"FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies are now believed by naturalists to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account of it was incoherent."

"Whenever a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there's a little fairy somewhere that falls right down dead."

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies."

"Do you believe in fairies? If you believe clap your hands."

"When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a great pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen a fairy. Very likely if they said this in the Kensington Gardens, they were standing looking at a fairy all the time. The reason they were cheated was that she pretended to be something else. This is one of their best tricks."