Isabelle Clar, Clar Is-a Belle, Ysobell Canto Cantiamo. Carolling, Carillions of bells. And the song of many birds singing the advent of the Infanta Isabelle, Princess Queen, Rose Lady Child, her singalong-time singing bells ringing, heralded to earth as she is hallowed from heaven.
Where elms and beeches grew (peats be under them) now shoot green willow, silver birch and red berried rowan. Where the badgers and bears snuffled and grumpled, now the fallow deer (so soft a slim slip of a thing, shy sying by Shimmerstreme Lake) trips a quicktrot of foxy footsteps, wurlitzing to the dance.
Eagles soaring and paper kites dancing on thermals, slip-stream away to make air time for linnets, nightingales, and meadows of larks, and sea birds, gulls, curlews and plovers, all shrill screaming, swan song singing welcome to Isabelle Clar, Princess Queen, sparkling life stream, so sweetly tiny and slim and dew-breathed in her flowering, little ringle dinglets shaking, that the sparkle of her silver shining can only just be glitterglimpsed in its flowing over the smooth stones of our years, where the soft moss grows, so eager to cushion this streamlet in her rushy bed of shingled sleep.
Fire forged stones and light blasted limes have stood long and still, burning then Ice-bound, waiting and wanting to hear the murmur and whisper of her coming, straining to hear through hope of her slim quicksilver flow, bright with diamonds, water-mint and dreams, rolling in her whippling waters, to frail to float a rose petal, catching King-Cups in the strimmenings of her midnight hair (midnight though threatening to splash dawn on the day) down the Glacier of Grace, between the mountains of Faith and Aspiring, down to bibble and sleep and babble again, in the dew green meadows where our Father has given us leave to pitch our tents, and to fold our flocks, to sew and so.
Now on a rushy bed, between banks of the wool of lambs and of robins, in a clearing, in a wood, in a valley, lies Isabelle Clar, at her ease, while we sit or stand around in silent and greatful wonder at the love which brings such a gift to us; grateful for her safe deliverance; silenced by her unblemished completeness. We will rinse out our lullabyes on her shingle, and string them round her cot to dry.
Her songs will sweep up the dust and blow it from the belfries of our minds. The fluttering bats who chittered their bugs and beetles there, and the grey-pated owls who chewed on their wisdom and their fieldmice, must make shift for furry friends, fairy ballerinas, flopsy bunnies, incy wincy spiders, and prancing ponies. So the whole world lies bright in its fresh painted hour, breathless in the silence of the sweet chestnuts, still as the unicorn waiting by his enchanted pool, straining to follow we out by spiderfootfall, and ream her our dreams, to tell again the old new tails of beetlewings and barley-sugar, to our waterbright, new, lightest ,swanfeathered daughterprecious-
Isabelle Clar.
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