hans christian andersen quote at sfo terminal

#Hans christian andersen quote at sfo terminal skin#
#Hans christian andersen quote at sfo terminal windows#

But each sister promised to tell the others about all that she saw, and what she found most marvelous on her first day. Next year one of her sisters would be fifteen, but the others - well, since each was a whole year older than the next the youngest still had five long years to wait until she could rise up from the water and see what our world was like. 'When you get to be fifteen,' her grandmother said, 'you will be allowed to rise up out of the ocean and sit on the rocks in the moonlight, to watch the great ships sailing by. Her grandmother had to call the little birds 'fish,' or the princess would not have known what she was talking about, for she had never seen a bird. And she thought it was nice that the woods were green, and that the fish you saw among their branches could sing so loud and sweet that it was delightful to hear them. What seemed nicest of all to her was that up on land the flowers were fragrant, for those at the bottom of the sea had no scent.

Her old grandmother had to tell her all she knew about ships and cities, and of people and animals. Nothing gave the youngest princess such pleasure as to hear about the world of human beings up above them. It looked as if the roots and the tips of the branches were kissing each other in play. Beside the statue she planted a rose-colored weeping willow tree, which thrived so well that its graceful branches shaded the statue and hung down to the blue sand, where their shadows took on a violet tint, and swayed as the branches swayed. This figure of a handsome boy, carved in pure white marble, had sunk down to the bottom of the sea from some ship that was wrecked. She was an unusual child, quiet and wistful, and when her sisters decorated their gardens with all kinds of odd things they had found in sunken ships, she would allow nothing in hers except flowers as red as the sun, and a pretty marble statue. One of them made her little flower bed in the shape of a whale, another thought it neater to shape hers like a little mermaid, but the youngest of them made hers as round as the sun, and there she grew only flowers which were as red as the sun itself. When there was a dead calm, you could just see the sun, like a scarlet flower with light streaming from its calyx.Įach little princess had her own small garden plot, where she could dig and plant whatever she liked. You would have thought yourself aloft in the air with only the blue sky above and beneath you, rather than down at the bottom of the sea. A strange blue veil lay over everything down there. The soil was very fine sand indeed, but as blue as burning brimstone. Their fruit glittered like gold, and their blossoms flamed like fire on their constantly waving stalks.

Outside the palace was a big garden, with flaming red and deep-blue trees. But these fish, now, would swim right up to the little princesses to eat out of their hands and let themselves be petted.

#Hans christian andersen quote at sfo terminal windows#

Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open the windows.

The whole day long they used to play in the palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the walls.

#Hans christian andersen quote at sfo terminal skin#

Her skin was as soft and tender as a rose petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deep sea, but like all the others she had no feet. They were six lovely girls, but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. Except for this she was an altogether praiseworthy person, particularly so because she was extremely fond of her granddaughters, the little sea princesses. Therefore she flaunted twelve oysters on her tail while the other ladies of the court were only allowed to wear six. She was a clever woman, but very proud of her noble birth. The sea king down there had been a widower for years, and his old mother kept house for him. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would be the pride of a queen's crown. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and shut with the tide. From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea king. All sorts of fish, large and small, dart among the branches, just as birds flit through the trees up here. No indeed! The most marvelous trees and flowers grow down there, with such pliant stalks and leaves that the least stir in the water makes them move about as though they were alive. Now don't suppose that there are only bare white sands at the bottom of the sea. It goes down deeper than any anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea.

Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid or `Den lille Havfrue' (1837)įar out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass.