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?
Click here to read on...and receive 2 more beautiful wisdom stories from Diana Beaulieu complete with stunning illustrations and reflection questions.
Artist Credits:
Cathy McClelland
Mugwort Designs
