Diana Beaulieu
3 min
Updated: Apr 23
Lion was the King of all the animals
From his golden mane and his amber eyes
To his shining pelt and his velvet paws
He was the most beautiful, the most magnificent
The most dazzling creature you could ever imagine
Everywhere that lion roamed
Every living thing fell in love with him
The zebra, the monkey, the giraffe,
Even the trees and the grasses beneath Lion’s feet
Whispered as he walked by
“Oh Lion, I love you, How I love you!”
But Lion heard nothing
In fact he had never heard anything
In his whole life
Apart from the sound of his own voice
Lion lived alone in the rocky peaks
Of the highest mountain of his Kingdom
And from there he liked to survey his territory
From one end to the other
One day, as Lion was looking down from his mountain
He said to himself,
“I know every inch and every nook of my Kingdom
I have roamed this land a thousand times
There is nothing new here for me to discover,
Nothing to whet my appetite for adventure.
“I wish to take a journey beyond my land
To discover what lies in the far reaches of the world
And I will journey on and on to the ends of the earth
To the place where I can go no further!”
So Lion descended from his mountain, crossed his Kingdom
And leaving behind everything that he knew
He began to walk on and on and on and on
Through verdant jungles of emerald trees and chattering birds
Through mighty mountains of snowy peaks and circling eagles
Through endless desert of burning sun and swirling sands
And everywhere that Lion went
Every living thing fell in love with him
The emerald trees, the chattering birds, the snowy peaks, the circling eagles
Whispered as he walked by
“Oh Lion, I love you, How I love you!”
But Lion heard nothing
Only the sound of his own voice
Beating over and over like a drum
“On and on and on I must go till the ends of the earth
To the place where I can go no further!”
Until one day Lion came to a desert
Of burning sun and swirling sands
That blew into shifting sand dunes
Each dune higher than the next
And as Lion climbed dune after dune
The burning sun beat down upon his brow
He began to sweat
And the more he sweated
The more salt water poured into his eyes
Until he could barely see ahead of him
And as he kept on climbing
He thought he saw through his stinging eyes
The strangest thing in the distance
Something huge shimmering
Dancing on the surface of the sand
But he could not be quite sure what it was
So on he went all day, climbing dune after dune
And that strange shimmering thing got closer and closer
But still he could not make out what it was
Until he climbed to the top of one dune higher than all the rest
A cool breeze swept across his face
The sweat cleared from his brow and his eyes
And he saw clearly at last
A great expanse of water
That stretched from one end of the horizon to the other
That danced and glimmered with a thousand tones
Of blue and green and all the colours in between
That sent rolling waves as tall as Lion himself
Crashing towards the shore
Where they broke into a thousand drops of foamy spray
It was the Sea
Lion stopped for a moment and stared at this spectacle
And he said to himself his body swelling with pride
“Finally! I have reached the end of the earth!
This is the place where I can go no further!”
But in that that very same moment he felt
A cold churning in the depths of his belly
And a trembling in his legs
For never had he seen anything so vast,
So mysterious, so unfamiliar
The moment the Sea saw Lion
She fell in love with him
“Oh Lion, I love you, how I love you,” she whispered
But Lion heard nothing....
How will the Sea make Lion listen to her?
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Artist Credits:
Cathy McClelland
Mugwort Designs