(silence)
(dramatic instrumental music)
*
* Something told the wild geese *
* It was time to go
* Though the fields lay golden
* Something whispered
(vocalizing "snow")
* Leaves were green and stirring *
* Berries luster glossed
* But beneath warm feathers
* Something cautioned
(vocalizing "frost")
* All the sagging orchards
* Steamed with amber spice
* But each wild breast stiffened *
* at remembered ice
(dramatic instrumental music)
* Something told the wild geese *
* It was time to fly
* Summer sun was on their wings *
* Winter in their cry
* Summer sun was on their wings *
* Winter in their cry
(dramatic instrumental music)
* For the sea has claimed its own *
* And spreads its rippled blanket over the site *
* And the great white bird with the black-tipped wings *
* That saw it all from the beginning to the end *
* Has returned to the dark frozen silences of the north-lands *
* Whence she came
(dramatic instrumental music)
- In the late spring of 1930, Philip Rhayader
came to the abandoned lighthouse at the mouth
of the River Aelder.
Now no one knew exactly from where he came
but he spoke with a distinctly Welsh lilt.
And the postmistress in the nearby village Chelmbury
said she knew for a fact that in the very center
of Wales just north of the Brecken Beacons
was a town called Rhayader.
So it was thought that perhaps he had somehow made his way
to the Essex coast from that distant and hilly land
far to the west.
He bought the lighthouse and many acres of marshland surrounding it.
He lived and he worked there alone the year round.
He was a painter of birds and of nature who,
for reasons had withdrawn from all human society.
Now some of those reasons were apparent on his fortnightly
visits to Chelmbury for some supplies where the natives
looked askance at his misshapen body and his dark visage.
For he was a hunchback and his left arm was crippled.
It was bent at the wrist like the claw of a bird.
Well, they soon became accustomed to this strange figure,
small but powerful.
The massive, dark, bearded head set just slightly below
that mysterious mound on his back, the glowing eyes,
clawed hand, and they marked him off as that queer
painter chap who lives down the lighthouse
in the swamp, you know.
Well physical deformity often breeds hatred of humanity
in men, but Rhayader did not hate.
He loved very greatly, mankind, the animal kingdom,
and all of nature.
His heart was filled with kindness and pity
and understanding.
Though he had mastered his handicap, but he could not master
the rebuffs he suffered from others due to his appearance.
The thing that drove him into seclusion was his failure
to find anywhere a return of the warmth
that flowed from him.
He repelled women.
Now men would have warmed to him had they gotten
to know him, but the mere fact that an effort
was being made was hurtful to Rhayader,
and it drove him to avoid the person making it.
He was 27 when he first came to the Great Marsh.
He had traveled much before, making the decision
to withdraw from a world in which he felt
he could not find a personal masculine reference
to live in it as other men had.
In his solitude he had his birds, his paintings,
and his boat.
He owned a 16-footer which he sailed with wonderful skill.
Alone with no eyes to watch him, he managed well
with his deformed hand.
He would often use his strong teeth to handle the sheets
of his billowing sails in a tricky blow.
He would sail the tidal creeks and the estuaries
out to sea, be gone for days at a time looking
for new birds to photograph, sketch,
so he could paint them.
And he became adept at netting them to add to his collection
of tamed wild fowl in a pen near his studio
which became the nucleus of a sanctuary.
He was a friend to all things wild and the wild things
repaid him with their friendship.
Tamed in his enclosures were the geese that came
winging down the coast from Iceland and Spitzbergen
each October in great skeins that darkened the sky
and filled the air with a rushing noise
of their passage.
Now some were pinioned so that they would remain there
as a sign and signal to the wild ones that came down
at each winter's beginning that here was food and shelter.
Many hundreds came and they remained with him
all through the cold weather,
from October to the early spring when they migrated
north again to their breeding grounds below the ice rim.
Rhayader, he was content in the knowledge that when
the storms blew or it was bitter cold and food was scarce,
or the big punt guns of the distance bag hunters roared,
his birds were safe.
That he had gathered the sanctuary and security
of his own arms and heart the many wild and beautiful
creatures who knew and trusted him.
Oh they would answer the call of the north in the spring,
but in the fall they would come back barking
and whooping, and honking in the autumn sky
to circle the landmark of the old lighthouse
and drop to earth nearby to be his guests again.
Birds that he well remembered and recognized
from previous years.
And this made him very happy because he knew
that implanted somewhere in their beings was
the germ knowledge of his existence
and his safe haven, and that that knowledge had become
a part of him.
And with the coming of the gray skies and the winds
from the north would send them unerringly back to him.
And for the rest, well his heart and soul went into
the painting of the country in which he lived
and the creatures that he loved.
He painted the loneliness and the smell
of the salt-laden cold, eternity and agelessness
of the marsh.
Wild living creatures don flights,
frightened things taking to the air,
winged shadows in the night hiding from the moon.
One November afternoon three years after Rhayader
had come to the Great Marsh, a child approached
the lighthouse studio by means of the old sea wall.
And in her arms she carried a singular, remarkable,
yet peculiar object.
She was no more than 12, slender, dirty, nervous,
and timid as bird, but beneath that grime
as eerily beautiful as a marsh fairy
she was pure Saxon, large-boned, fair,
with a head to which her body was yet to grow,
and deep-set violet colored eyes.
Oh, she was desperately frightened of the ugly man
she had come to see.
For legend had already begun to grow around her,
that was spread by the native wild-fowlers who hated him
for interfering in their gun sports.
They found it facile to weave stories of darkness
and malevolent shadows about the swarthy, deformed creature
that lurked in the swamp.
But greater than her fear was the need of that
which she bore.
For locked in her child's heart was the knowledge
picked up somewhere in the marshlands that this ogre
who lived in the lighthouse possessed a magic
that could heal injured things.
Now she had never seen Rhayader before and was close
to fleeing in panic at the dark apparition
that appeared at the studio door drawn by her footsteps.
The black head, beard, sinister hump, crooked claw.
She stood there staring, disturbed like marsh bird
ready for instant flight.
But his voice was kind and made song-like by that curious
Welsh lilt which she had never heard before.
"Aye, well now so who is this then?
"And what is it that you have there, child?"
She stood her ground and then edged timidly forward,
for the thing she carried in her arms was a large
white bird and it was quite still.
There were stains of blood on its whiteness
and on her kirtle where she had held it close to her heart.
The girl placed it in his arms.
"I found it, sir.
"It's hurted, but I think it's still alive."
"Aye well, yes, yes, I think it be.
"But I think we best have a closer look, don't you think?
"You best come in where it's warm, girl, come on.
"Oh come, come, come, come."
Rhayader went inside bearing the bird which he placed
upon a table, moved feebly.
Her curiosity overcame her fear,
and the girl followed and found herself in a room
made toasty warm by a cold fire, shiny with many colored
paintings that covered the walls and full of
a strange, but a pleasant smell.
With his good hand, Rhayader spread one of the immense
white pinions and it was beautifully tipped in black.
He looked and he marveled and then he said,
"Why good Lord in heaven girl,
"wherever did you find her then?"
"Why into marsh, sir, where the fowlers had been.
"What is it, sir?"
(laughing) "Why it's a snow goose
from Canada.
"But how in all heaven came she here, I wonder?"
Name seemed to mean nothing to the little girl.
Her deep violet eyes shining out of the dirt
on her thin face were fixed with deep concern
on the injured bird.
She said, "You think you can heal it, sir?"
"Well yes, yes, I think I can.
"At very least we'll have a good go at it, aye?
"But I think I shall need your help, come."
There were scissors and bandages and splints
on a shelf and he was marvelously deft
even with that crooked claw and managed to hold the things.
He said, "Oh she's been shot, poor thing.
"Oh her little leg is broken, and the wing tip, too.
"But it's not too bad, you see.
"Now we clip her primaries so we can bandage it.
"Then in the spring these feathers grow back
"and she'd be able to fly again.
"We bandage it close to the body so she cannot move it
"until it is healed.
"And then we make a proper splint for
"this poor little leg."
Her fears forgotten, the child watched fascinated as he worked.
And all the more so because while he fixed a fine splint
for that shattered leg, he told her the most
wonderful story.
"Oh, this bird is a young one.
"It's no more than a year old.
"And she was born in a northern land far,
"far across the sea,
"and flying to the south to escape the snow
"and the ice and the bitter cold.
"Oh a great storm had seized her and whirled her "and buffeted her about.
"Oh, it was a terrible storm, stronger than her great wings,
"stronger than anything.
"For days and nights it held her in its grip
"and there was nothing she could do but fly before the wind.
"And when finally it had blown itself out
"and her shore instincts took her south again.
"Why, she was over a different land and surrounded
"by strange birds which she had never seen before.
"At last exhausted by her long ordeal she had sunk down
"to rest in a friendly green marsh only to be met
"by the blast from the hunter's gun.
"Oh what bitter reception for a visiting princess,
"I should say, wouldn't you say?
"Yes, yes, I think you would say. (laughs)
"Why don't you and I, we call her La Princess Perdue.
"That means the lost princess.
"And in a few days I promise you,
"she'll be feeling much better, you see."
He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of grain.
The snow goose opened her round yellow eyes
and began to nibble.
The child laughed with delight.
But then suddenly caught her breath with alarm
as the full import of where she was
and who she was with pressed in upon her,
and without a word she turned and fled out of the door.
"Wait, wait now girl," cried Rhayader,
and he went to the entrance,
where he stopped so that it framed his dark bulk.
But the girl was already fleeing down the sea wall,
but she paused at his voice and looked back.
"Well at least you can tell me your name then, girl."
"Frith."
"Eh?"
"Frith."
"Frith! Oh, Fritha I suppose.
"Well, where do you live then, Fritha?"
"With the fisher folk at Wickaeldroth," she said.
She used the old Saxon pronunciation, Wickaeldroth.
"Well I think you'd best come back tomorrow,
"or day next and see how your princess be getting on,
"you think?"
She paused again and Rhayader must have thought
of the wild water birds caught in that motionless
split second of alarm before taking to flight.
But her thin voice came back to him, "Aye."
Then she was off, her fair-hair streaming out behind her.
Well, the snow goose mended rapidly
and by midwinter was already limping about
the enclosure with the wild pink-footed geese
and had learned to come to be fed at Rhayader's call.
And the child, Fritha, or Frith, she was a frequent visitor.
She had overcome her fear of Rhayader.
And her imagination was captured by the presence
of this strange white princess from a land
far, far over the sea, a land that was all pink.
And as she knew from the map that hung on Rhayader's wall
upon which together they had traced the stormy path
of the lost bird from the vast wetlands of Canada,
across the immense sea, to the east coast of England
and the great Essex marsh.
Then one June morning, a group of late pink-feet,
fat and well fed from the winter at the lighthouse,
answered the call of the breeding grounds
and rose lazily, climbing into the sky
in ever widening circles.
And with them, her white body and black-tipped pinions
shining in the spring sun, was the snow goose.
It so happened that Frith was at the lighthouse that day.
And her cry brought Rhayader running from his studio.
"Look, Philip, look, the Princess
"I think she be going away."
Rhayader stared up into the sky at the climbing specks.
"Aye," he said, "the Princess be going home now."
"Listen, listen she be bidding us farewell then."
Out of the clear sky came the mournful barking
of the pink-feet, and above it the higher, clearer note
of the snow goose.
The specks drifted northward, formed into a tiny V,
diminished, and vanished.
And with the departure of the snow goose
ended the visits of Frith to the lighthouse.
Rhayader learned all over again the meaning
of the word loneliness.
That summer, out of his memory,
he painted a picture of a slender, grime-covered child,
her fair hair blown by a November storm,
who bore in her arms a wounded white bird
close to her heart.
*
* The slender grime-covered child *
* Her fair hair blown by the November snow *
* Who bore in arms a wounded white bird *
(mournful instrumental music)
- Then in mid-October a miracle occurred.
Rhayader was in his enclosure, feeding his birds.
And a gray northeast wind was blowing
and the land was sighing beneath the incoming tide.
And above the sea and the wind noises
he heard a clear, high note.
He turned his eyes upward to the evening sky
in time to see first an infinite speck,
and then a black-and-white pinioned dream
that circled the lighthouse once,
and finally a reality that dropped to earth in the pen
and came waddling forth importantly to be fed,
as if she had never been away.
It was the snow goose.
There was no mistaking her.
Tears of joy came to Rhayader's eyes.
Whoa, now where have you been? I wonder.
Oh, surely not home to Canada.
Oh you couldn't have done that, I know.
Why you just have summered in Greenland or Spitzbergen
with the pink-feet.
But you remembered and you came home to me.
When next he went into Chelmbury for supplies
he left a message with the postmistress.
One that must have caused her considerable bewilderment.
Now you tell Frith, who lives with the fisher-folk
at Wickaeldroth that the Lost Princess has returned.
Three days later, Frith, taller, still tousled and unkempt,
came shyly to the lighthouse to visit La Princesse Perdue.
Time passed and on the Great Marsh it was marked
by the height of the tides, the march of the seasons,
the passage of the birds.
And for Rhayader, by the arrival and the departure
of the snow goose.
The world outside boiled and seethed and rumbled
with the eruption that was soon to break forth
and come close to marking its destruction.
But not yet did the chaos touch Rhayader,
or for that matter, Frith.
They had fallen into a curious natural rhythm,
even as the child grew older.
And the snow goose was at the lighthouse,
well then she came too, to visit and learn many things from Rhayader.
They sailed together in his speedy boat
that he handled so skillfully.
And from him she learned the lore of every wild bird,
from gull to gyrfalcon that flew the marshes.
She cooked for him sometimes,
and even learned to mix his paints.
But when the snow goose returned to its summer home,
well it was as if a wall had gone up between them
and she did not come to the lighthouse.
One year the bird did not return at all.
Rhayader was heartbroken.
All things seemed to have ended for him.
He painted furiously through the winter
and the next summer, never once saw the child.
But then in the fall that familiar cry once more rang
from the sky, and the huge white bird,
now at its full growth,
dropped from the skies as mysteriously as she had departed.
Joyously, Rhayader sailed his boat into Chelmbury
and left his message with the postmistress.
But curiously, it was more than a month after
he left the message before Frith reappeared
at the lighthouse.
And Rhayader realized with a shock
that she was no longer a child.
After the year in which the bird had remained away,
its periods of absence grew shorter and shorter.
It had grown so tame that it followed Rhayader about
and even came into the studio while he was working.
In the spring of 1940 the birds migrated early
from the Great Marsh, the world was on fire.
A whine and roar of the bombers
and the thudding explosions frightened them.
And on the first day of May, Frith and Rhayader stood
shoulder to shoulder on the old sea wall
and watched the last of the unpinioned pink-feet
and barnacle geese rise from their sanctuary,
she, tall, slender, free as air and hauntingly beautiful.
And he, dark, grotesque, his massive bearded head
raised to the sky, his glowing dark eyes watching the geese
form their flight tracery.
"Philip, look," said Frith.
He followed her eyes.
The snow goose had taken flight, her giant wings spread,
but she was flying very low,
and once came quite close to them,
so that for a moment the spreading black-tipped,
white pinions seemed to caress them and they felt the rush
of the bird's swift passage.
Once, twice, she circled the lighthouse,
and then dropped back to earth in the enclosure
with the pinioned geese and began to feed.
"She be not going," said Frith with marvel in her voice.
The bird in its close passage seemed to have woven
a kind of magic about her.
"The Princess be going to stay," she said.
"Aye," said Rhayader, "Aye, she stay now
"and never go away again.
"This be her home now of her own free will."
The spell the bird had girt about her was broken,
and Frith was suddenly conscious of the fact
that she was frightened.
And the things that frightened her
were in Rhayader's eyes, the longing and the loneliness
and the deep, welling, unspoken things that lay in
and behind them as he turned them upon her.
His last words were repeating themselves in her head
as though he had said them again.
This be her home now of her own free will.
The delicate tendrils of her instincts reached to him
and carried back to her the message of the things
he could not speak because of what he thought himself to be,
ugly, misshapen and grotesque.
And where his voice might have soothed her,
her fright grew greater at his silence
and the power of the unspoken things between them.
The woman in her bade her take flight from something
that she was not yet quite capable of understanding.
Frith said, "Aye, I must go now.
"Good-bye, Philip, I be glad that the Princess is staying.
"You'll not be so alone now, good-bye."
She turned and walked swiftly away,
and his sadly spoken, "Good-bye, Frith,"
was only a half-heard ghost of a sound borne to her ears
above the rustling of the marsh grass.
Oh, she was far away before she dared turn
for a backward glance.
And when she did, he was still standing on the sea wall,
a small dark speck against the cold gray sky.
Her fear had stilled now.
It was replaced by something else,
a strange sense of loss that made her stand quite still
for a moment, so sharp was it.
And then more slowly, she continued on,
away from the skyward-pointing finger of the lighthouse
and the lonely bent little man beneath it.
* Her fear had stilled now
* It had been replaced by something else *
* A strange sense of loss
* That made her stand quite still for a moment *
* So sharp was it
*
- It was a little more than three weeks before Frith
reappeared at the lighthouse.
May was at its end, and the day too,
when the long golden twilight that was giving way
to the silver of the moon already hanging
in the eastern sky.
As her steps brought her near, Frith saw the yellow light
of Rhayader's lantern down by his little wharf,
and she found him there.
His sailboat rocking gently on a flooding tide.
He was loading supplies into her.
Water and food, bottles of brandy, gear and a spare sail.
His dark eyes were glowing with excitement.
He was breathing heavily from his exertions.
Sudden alarm seized Frith.
"Philip, you be goin' away?"
He paused in his work to greet her.
There was something in his face that was aglow, a look.
She'd never seen it before.
"Ah, Frith, I'm so glad you've come.
"Yes, I must go away.
"It's a little trip, but I'll come back."
And now the words came tumbling from him.
He must go to Dunkirk a hundred miles across the North Sea.
The British army was trapped there on the sands
awaiting destruction at the hands of the advancing Germans.
The port was in flames, the position was hopeless.
He had heard about it in the village when he had gone for supplies.
Men were putting out from Chelmbury
to answer the government's call.
And every tug, fishing boat, anything that could float
and move was heading for the beaches.
Frith listened and felt her heart dying within her.
He was, he was saying he would cross the sea
in his little boat?
He could take six men at a time, seven in a pinch.
He could make many trips from the beaches to the transports.
Why, the girl was young, primitive, inarticulate.
She did not understand war, or what was happening in France,
or the meaning of the trapped army.
But the blood within her told her this was danger.
"Oh Philip, if you go you'll not come back.
"Why must it be you?"
"Oh Frith," he said, "Why the men are huddled on the beaches
"like hunted birds, like the wounded and hunted birds
"that we used to find and bring to sanctuary.
"And over them fly the steel hawks of prey
"and they've no shelter from them.
"Oh they are lost and storm-driven,
"but the lost princess you found and brought to me
"out of the marsh so many years ago, do you remember?
"Well now Frith, they need my help, and that is why
"I must go.
"Oh it's something I can do, yes I can!
"You see for once, for once I can be a man
"and play my part."
Frith stared Rhayader, and for the first time she saw
that he was not ugly, misshapen or grotesque,
but quite beautiful.
Now things were turmoiling now in her own soul,
crying to be said, and she did not know how to say them.
"I'll come with you, Philip."
"No, no now.
"No, your place in the boat would cause a soldier
"to be left behind, and then another and another.
"No, no, no, I must go alone."
He donned rubber coat and boots and took to his boat.
And he waved and called back as he sailed away.
"Good-bye, Frith, now you look after the birds
"until I return, yes?"
Frith's hand came up to wave, but only halfway.
"God speed you," she said.
"I will look after the birds. God speed, Philip."
*
It was night now, bright with moon fragments
and stars and northern glow.
And Frith stood on the sea wall and watched the sail
gliding down the swollen estuary when suddenly
from the darkness behind her there came a rush of wings,
and something swept past her into the air.
And in the night light she saw the flash of white wings,
black-tipped, and the thrust forward head of the snow goose
as it rose and cruised over the lighthouse once
and then headed down the winding creek where Rhayader's sail
was slanting in the gaining breeze.
She flew above him in slow, wide circles.
White sail and white bird were visible for a very long time.
"You watch o'er him, Princess," Frith whispered.
"You watch o'er him."
When at last they were both out of sight she turned
and walked slowly with bent head back
to the empty lighthouse.
(ethereal instrumental music)
(ethereal choral singing)
(instrumental music with military drumming)
- Now the story becomes fragmentary,
and one of these fragments is in the words
of a man on leave who told it in the public room
of the Crown and Arrow, an East Chapel pub.
"It was a goose, it was.
"It was a blooming goose, so help me," said Private Potton,
of His Majesty's London Rifles.
"Oh go on," said a bandy-legged artilleryman.
"No, it was, it was a goose.
"Jock here, he seen the same as me, ain't that right Jock?
"There you see, it was a goose.
"And it come flying down out of the muck and stink
"and smoke at Dunkirk.
"It was white with black on its wings,
"and it circled us like a bloomin' dive bomber, it did.
"And offshore was the Kentish Maid, a ruddy hex-cursion scow
of Margate, waiting to take us off,
"half a mile out from the bloomin' shallows.
"While we're laying there on the beach done in and cursing
"'cause there ain't no way to get out to the boat,
"here comes this bloomin' goose a-circlin' around us
"trapped there on the beach.
"Then on the horizon he comes in a bloody little sailboat.
"Him that saved the lot of us.
"He sailed clean through a boil of machine gun bullets,
"he did, into the shallows he come.
"He was a little dark man with a beard,
"bloomin' claw for a hand and a hump on his back.
"He had a rope in his teeth, his good hand on the tiller,
"the crooked one beckoning us to come on out "to his little sailboat.
"And overhead around and around flies this ruddy goose.
"'I can take seven at a time,' he sings out
"when he gets in close.
"So we waded on out to where he was.
"I was so weary I couldn't climb over the side.
"But he takes me by the collar of me tunic
"and he pulls with an in you go lad, come on next man.
"Oo, in I went too. Oo, he was strong he was.
"Well when the boat was full, off we went.
"Him sitting in the stern with a rope in his teeth "another in his crooked claw.
"His right hand on the tiller and the bloomin' goose
"is a flying around honking in the wind.
"And him with the tiller, he just look up at that goose
"and he grins at her like he's known her a life time.
"He brung us out to the Kentish Maid.
"He turns around, goes back for another load.
"He made trips all afternoon and all night, too.
"And I know that because the bloody lights of Dunkirk
"were so bright I could see by it.
"I don't know how many trips he made, "but he was still at it when we left.
"He give us a wave good-bye, and he heads back to Dunkirk
"and that bird with him.
"Blimey, it was queer seeing that ruddy big goose
"flying around his boat lit up by the fires
"like a white angel against this smoke, she was.
"I never did find out what happened to him,
"or even who he was,
"him with a hump and his little sailboat.
"What a bloody good man he was, isn't that right, Jock?"
"That's right, ravin' true, ravin' true,
"what a bloody good man."
"Well here's to him, cheers mate, whoever you was."
(laughing)
"That was a bloody big goose that was."
(laughing)
In an officer's club on Brook Street,
a retired naval officer, sixty-five-year-old
Commander Keith Brill-Oudener,
was telling of his experiences during the evacuation
of Dunkirk.
Called out of bed at four in the morning,
he had captained a lopsided Limehouse tug
across the Strait of Dover,
towing a string of Thames barges,
which he brought back four times loaded with soldiers.
On his last trip he came in with the funnel
shot away and a big hole in her side.
But they got her back to Dover.
(laughing)
"Well we got back to Dover, but it was a close one thing,
"I can tell you that.
"It was tragic too, in a way.
"Good and lucky for us oh, I dear say.
"Well, it was the third trip back.
"Well, I think it was the third, it doesn't matter.
"It was on towards six o'clock and we sighted this
"derelict small boat.
"Seemed to be a chap or a body, and a bird perched
"on the rail, a goose it was.
"Well, we changed our course to get nearer for a look-see.
"By God, it was a chap, or at least it had been, the poor fellow.
"Machine-gunned, you know, rather badly too.
"Face down in the boat.
"Did I mention the goose?
"I did, uh... well, tame, tame goose.
"Did you ever hear of such a thing?
"Neither did I.
"Well, we drifted close when one of our chaps reached over
"to grab the rail." (laughing)
"That goose hissed at him, she did.
"She hissed at him and beat her off with her wings.
"Couldn't drive it off.
"And suddenly, young Kittering who was with me,
"he give a shout, pointed to starboard.
"Hello, big old mine floating by, one of Jerrie's beauties,
"you know.
"Why if we hadn't changed course to go over
"to that little boat we would have piled right into it,
"head on, say what?
"Well, let it get a hundred yards astern of the last barge,
"and the lads blew it up with rifle-fire.
"We turned our attention back to the little boat.
"It was gone, sunk, chap with her.
"Well, concussions on the mine, you see.
"He must have been latched to her or caught in the rigging
"or some such thing.
"Well, this goose had gotten up and was flying in circles
"above where that little boat had been, three times
"like a plane saluting.
"Dashed queer thing seeing that, I can tell you.
"Then she just flew off to the west.
"Well, jolly good lucky thing for us we went over
"for a look-see."
(laughing)
"Odd though, very strange that goose."
Fritha remained alone at the little lighthouse
on the Great Marsh taking care of the pinion birds,
waiting for she knew not what.
The first days she haunted the sea wall, watching,
though she knew it was useless.
And later she roamed through the storerooms
of the lighthouse building with their stacks of canvases
on which Philip had painted every mood and light
of the desolate country and the wondrous, graceful,
feathered creatures that inhabited it.
And among them she found the picture that he had painted
of her from memory so many years ago
when she was just a child, and had stood,
windblown and timid, at his threshold,
hugging an injured bird to her heart.
And that picture and the things she saw in it
stirred her as nothing ever had before.
For so much of Philip's soul had gone into it.
And strangely it was the only time he had ever painted
the snow goose, that lost wild creature,
storm-driven from another land,
that to each had brought a friend.
And which in the end, returned to her with the message
that she would never see him again.
But long before the snow goose would come dropping
out of the crimson eastern sky to circle the lighthouse
in one last farewell,
Fritha, from the ancient powers of the blood that
was in her already knew that Philip would never return.
And so when one sunset she heard that high-pitched,
well-remembered note cried from the heavens,
it brought no instant of false hope to her heart.
This moment it seemed she had lived many times before.
She went slowly to the sea wall and turned her eyes
not toward the distant sea from whence a sail might come,
but to the sky from whose flaming arches
plummeted the snow goose.
And it was then that the sight,
the sound,
and the solitude surrounding broke the dam within her
and released the surging, overwhelming truth of her love.
Let it well forth in tears.
Wild spirit called to wild spirit,
and she seemed to be flying with the giant bird,
soaring with it into the evening sky
and hearkening to Rhayader's message.
Sky and earth were trembling with it
and filled her beyond the bearing of it.
Frith, Fritha, Frith my love, good-bye my love.
The white pinions, black-tipped, were beating it out
upon her heart, and her heart was answering.
Good-bye Philip, oh please know that I loved you.
Good-bye and God speed.
For a moment she thought the snow goose might land
in the old enclosure, but she only skimmed low,
then soared up again, flew in a wide,
graceful spiral once around the old light,
and then began to climb.
And watching it, Frith saw no longer the snow goose,
but the soul of Philip Rhayader taking farewell of her
before departing forever.
And so she stretched her arms up into the sky.
Stood on tiptoes reaching, and waved, "Good-bye Philip,
"good-bye."
Frith's tears were stilled now.
*
She stood watching silently long after the goose
had vanished.
And then she went into the lighthouse and secured that picture
that Philip had painted of her.
And hugging it to her heart,
she wended her way homeward along the old sea wall.
Each night for many weeks thereafter,
she came to the lighthouse to feed the pinioned birds.
Then one early morning a German pilot on a dawn raid
mistook the old abandoned lighthouse for an active
military object and dived down upon it
like a screaming steel hawk,
and blew it and everything in it to oblivion.
That evening when Fritha came back to where it had been,
well the sea had moved in through that breached corner,
covered it over.
And nothing was left to break the utter desolation.
No marsh fowl had even dared return.
Only the frightless gulls that wheeled and soared
and mewed their lonely plaint over the empty place
where it had been.
(mournful instrumental music)
* Something told the wild geese *
* It was time to go
* Though the fields lay golden
* Something whispered
(vocalizing "snow")
* Something told the wild geese *
* It was time to fly
* Summer sun was on their wings *
(vocalizing "wings")
* Winter in their cry
* For the sea has claimed its own *
* And spreads its rippled blanket over the site *
* And the great white bird with the black-tipped wings *
* That saw it all from the beginning to the end *
* Has returned to the dark frozen silences
of the north-lands *
* Whence she came
(mournful instrumental music)
(applause)