I read The Happy Prince today and I love this story so much. Oscar Wilde wrote it for his two sons.

The thing I loved about it as I read it today was what the story said about compassion. The heart of the prince is so tender and he truly sees the pain and hardship that people of his village endured. And he responds.

If you have not come across the story, the prince is a statue set on a column high above the city. He is gilded all over with golden leaves and has eyes of sapphire and a ruby on his sword hilt. When the prince lived, he was surrounded only by beauty and happy things. A wall stretched right around his garden, and so he was only ever aware of this beauty around him.

When he died, his statue was set above his city so that day by day he sees the ugliness and misery that there is.

In the story he befriends a funny little swallow. The swallow becomes the means by which the prince is able to respond to the needs of the destitute and hurting in his city. And the way that Wilde describes all of this is so exquisite. It is so beautiful.

Even though the prince’s heart was lead, he was so affected by the pain he witnessed that he wept. He was moved with compassion.

The story spoke to me so much of loving God. That as our love grows for Him, His priorities become ours. And His priority is for the hurting. Is my heart soft like His to the needs of others? Am I a needs-meeter?

When the prince had given all of himself away, and there were no more jewels or golden leaves upon him, the mayor and the councilors eventually had him pulled down. With his outside beauty stripped, he was no longer useful in their eyes. But in God’s eyes, as the story goes, the prince’s broken heart and his little friend the swallow, were eternally precious.

The writing in itself is exquisite. I hope this small excerpt blesses you as it did me,

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

‘Shall I love you?’ said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.