A swan: ‘I have looked upon these brilliant creatures, and now my heart is sore’ | Helen Sullivan

This is my last column in this series. ‘Farewell, all joys!’

This morning I learned the word “limn”. It looked at first like a typo, and I almost ignored it. But I pressed on the letters on my phone, which caused its meaning to pop up in a little box, like a window appearing in a wall. To limn is to “depict or describe in painting or words”.

I was drinking cold coffee in my kitchen, and preparing to write this column – my last. Because I knew that I would do the swan, a large, long-necked water bird had started gliding around my mind, so it seemed clear that the word limn looks like a swan: the tall l with the tiny flick of a dipped head, and the letters after.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue, –the swan’s
down-feather,
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.

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A swan: ‘I have looked upon these brilliant creatures, and now my heart is sore’ | Helen Sullivan

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