Image: “Hylas and the Water Nymphs,” by Henrietta Rae, ca. 1909, in Wikimedia Commons … https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hylas_and_the_Water_Nymphs.jpg … public domain … DESCRIPTION: On the left is a pond in the forest. In the pond are blooming water lilies. In the pond play six beautiful young water nymphs, with flowers in their hair. To the right, on the bank of the pond, kneels a young man with a cloth around his waist, and an ornate piece of cloth flung over his right shoulder. He is looking up at a beautiful water nymph standing behind him, and leaning towards him … COMMENTS: This image reminds me of an incarnational memory of meeting my true love at a pond in a deep forest many centuries ago. Only, we were all young children, growing up together in the forest, and we two … Tom and I … became pledged our troth at a much younger age. It was at about the age of the young people in the image that we two consummated our union. It is interesting that, in my incarnational memory, I was first a nature spirit in that forest, and then became a human child because of a young boy I saw playing in the pond; in a similar way, the image shows nature spirits as being fond of the young man by the pond.

Image: “Hylas and the Water Nymphs,” by Henrietta Rae, ca. 1909, in Wikimedia Commons … https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hylas_and_the_Water_Nymphs.jpg … public domain …

DESCRIPTION: On the left is a pond in the forest. In the pond are blooming water lilies. In the pond play six beautiful young water nymphs, with flowers in their hair. To the right, on the bank of the pond, kneels a young man with a cloth around his waist, and an ornate piece of cloth flung over his right shoulder. He is looking up at a beautiful water nymph standing behind him, and leaning towards him …

COMMENTS: This image reminds me of an incarnational memory of meeting my true love at a pond in a deep forest many centuries ago. Only, we were all young children, growing up together in the forest, and we two … Tom and I … became pledged our troth at a much younger age. It was at about the age of the young people in the image that we two consummated our union. It is interesting that, in my incarnational memory, I was first a nature spirit in that forest, and then became a human child because of a young boy I saw playing in the pond; in a similar way, the image shows nature spirits as being fond of the young man by the pond.

. . . . .

• “Tom o’ the Forest,” a Poem by Alice B. Clagett, Soundtrack and Words, 4 January 2018

“Tom o’ the Forest”
A Poem by Alice B. Clagett
Soundtrack and Words
4 January 2018

Ah, Tom! Tom o’ the Forest!
Would that I had been there
with you, my own dear love,
as our child grew in strength
. . . and beauty

Would, if I could,
. . . have stopped the flow
. . . . . . of my life blood
. . . . . . . . . such loss
. . . . . . . . . such pallor
. . . . . . . . . . . . out onto the brown leaves
. . . . . . . . . . . . by the woodland pool
. . . . . . . . . . . . where we once bathed

Dearest my love
Such a long and weary while
. . . Stood I by your own side,
. . . . . . sighing

The blade that longing
. . . lent your throat
. . . . . . sliced mine
. . . . . . . . . as well

Tom of my life
Tom of my seried lives’ yearning
Blest be the day
when our twained paths
once more marry

……………

Alice B. Clagett

Written on 4 January 2018
This account is entirely fictional.

Except where otherwise noted, “The Chalice and the Crucible” by Alice B. Clagett … https://chaliceandcrucible.com/ … is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) … https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ..