Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. - Denise Levertov

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.

Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained — unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening — out!

As Andersen told it, the tale was not for young children, not even called ‘The Little’-just, ‘The Mermaid.’ It’s about love and grief, a myth of longing and sacrifice, far closer, say, to Goethe’s Parable than to any jovial folktale, much less to today’s manufactured juvenile distractions.