It was in the forests of Asan that
the Golden Bird first flew out from a flower-besieged thicket and fluttered
before the dazzled eyes of Luilla. it was in the forests of Asan,—the open and
impenetrable, the haunt of the dancers and untrodden of human feet, coiling
place of the cobra and the python, lair of the lion and jaguar, formidable
retreat of the fleeing antelope, yet the green home of human safety where a man
and a maiden could walk in the moonlit night and hear unconcerned the far-off
broil of the Kings of the wilderness. It was into the friendly and open places
that the golden bird fluttered, but it came no less from the coverts of dread
and mystery. From the death and the night it flew out into the sunlight where
Luilla was happily straying.
Luilla loved to wander on the
verges of danger, just where those flower-besieged thickets began and formed
for miles together a thorny and tangled rampart full at once of allurement and
menace. She did not venture in, for she had a great fear of the thorns and
brambles and a high respect for her radiant beauty, her own constant object of
worship and the daily delight of all who dwell for a while on earth labouring
the easy and kindly soil on the verges of the forests of Asan. But always she
wandered close to the flowery wall and her mind, safe in its voluntary
incorporeality, strayed like a many-hued butterfly, far into the forbidden
region which the gods had so carefully secluded. Perhaps secretly she hoped
that some day some kingly and leonine head would thrust itself out through the
flowers and compel her with a gaze of friendly and majestic invitation or else
that the green poisonous head of a serpent reposing itself on a flower would
scrutinize her out of narrow eyes and express a cunning approval of her beauty.
It was not out of fear of the lions and the serpents that Luilla forbore to
enter the secret places. She knew she could overcome the most ferocious
intentions of any destroyer in the world, firm-footed or footless, if only he
would give her three minutes before making up his mind to eat or bite her. But
neither lion nor serpent of these appointed haunts. It was the golden bird that
first fluttered out from the thickets to Luilla.
Luilla looked at it as it flitted
from bough to bough, and her eyes were dazzled and her soul wondered. For the
little body of the bird was an inconstant flame of flying and fleeting gold and
the wings that opened and fluttered were of living gold and the small shapely
head was crested gold and the long graceful quivering tail was trailing
feathered gold; all was gold about the bird, except the eyes and they were two
jewels of a soft ever changing colour and sheltered strange-looking depths of
love and thought in their gentle brilliance. On the bough where it perched, it
seemed as if all the soft-shaded leaves where suddenly sunlit. For as Luilla
accustomed her eyes to the flickering brightness of the golden bird, it hovered
at last on a branch, settled and sang. And its voice also was of gold.
The bird sang in its own high
secret language; but Luilla's ear understood its thoughts and in Luilla's soul,
as it thirsted and listened and trembled with delight, the song shaped itself
easily into human speech. This then was what the bird sang—the bird that came
out of the Death's night, sang to Luilla a song of beauty and of delight:
"Luiila! Luilla! Luilla! green
and beautiful are the meadows where the children run and pluck the flowers and
green and beautiful the pastures where the calm-eyed cattle graze, green and
beautiful the corn-field ripening on the village bounds, but greener are the
impenetrable thickets of Asan than her open places of life, and more beautiful
than the meadows and the pastures and the cornfields are the forests of death and
night. More ensnaring to some is the danger of the jaguar than the attractive
face of a child, more welcome the foot-tracks of the lion as it haunts the
pastures of the cattle, more fair and fruitful the thorn and the wild briar
than the fields full of ripening grain. And this I know that no such flowers
bloom in the safety and ease of Asan's meadows, though they make a thick and
divine treading for luxurious feet, as I have seen blooming on the borders of
the wild morass, in the heart of the bramble thicket and over the mouth of the
serpent's lair. Shall I not take thee, O Luilla! into those woods? Thou shalt
pluck the flowers in the forests of night and death, thou shalt lay thy hands
on the lion's mane."
"O Luilla! O Luilla! O
Luilla!"
[This is an early work of Sri
Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Short Stories]
http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/07/0017_e.htm
http://www.aurobindo.ru/index_e.htm
Here is a story of the Golden Bird
from Wikipedia:
Every year, a king's apple tree is
robbed of one golden apple during the night. He sets his sons to watch, and
though the first two fall asleep, the youngest stays awake and sees that the
thief is a golden bird. He tries to shoot it, but only knocks a feather off.
The feather is so valuable that the
king decides he must have the bird. He sends his three sons, one after another,
to capture the priceless golden bird. The sons each meet a talking fox, who
gives them advice for their quest: to choose a bad inn over a brightly lit and
merry one. The first two sons ignore the advice and, in the pleasant inn,
abandon their quest.
The third son obeys the fox, but
when the fox advises him to take the golden bird in a wooden cage rather than a
golden one, he disobeys, and the golden bird rouses the castle, resulting in
his capture. He is sent after the golden horse as a condition for sparing his
life. The fox advises him to use a wooden saddle rather than a golden one, but
he fails again. He is sent after the princess from the golden castle. The fox
advises him not to let her say farewell to her parents, but he disobeys, and
the princess's father orders him to remove a hill as the price of his life.
The fox removes it, and then, as
they set out, he advises the prince how to keep all the things he has won. It
then asks the prince to shoot it and cut off its head. When the prince refuses,
it warns him against buying gallowsflesh and sitting on the edge of wells.
He finds that his brothers are to
be hanged (on the gallows) and buys their liberty. They find out what he has
done. When he sits on a well's edge, they push him in. They take the things and
the princess and bring them to their father. However the bird, the horse, and
the princess all grieve for the prince. The fox rescues the prince. When he
returns to his father's castle dressed in a beggar's cloak, the bird, the
horse, and the princess all recognize him as the man who won them, and become
cheerful again. His brothers are put to death, and he marries the princess.
Finally, the third son cuts off the
fox's head and feet at the creature's request. The fox is revealed to be a man,
the brother of the princess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bird