For a breath of ecstasy

 

Spend all you have for loveliness,
    Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
    Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

"happy. Happy, happy, happy, happy." It was of no use. Happy didn't seem to be the kind of feeling you got that easily. But "sad" was, and it's the contrary of happy isn't it? Why did it need to be so complicated to feel happy? It isn't a complicated word. H.A.P.P.Y. Just four letters. Four. Just like Love, Hope, Free... Fame. Just words that you wish for, pretty simple words that you murmur in your heart and makes your head burst when you try to figure out how to get there. Well, fame she didn't need, she's got too much of that. One thinks you should be happy when you're Famous and Rich- there you see another four lettered word you wish you where. But you're not. At least she wasn't happy. She had tried all the different ways of getting happy. They said women where happy when they got new clothes, she bought the most beautiful outfits that got every single woman in town jealous- it didn't make her feel happy.
They said falling in love made you see the world in pink and feel happy all the time. She choose the handsomest man in the world, he had more qualities then any man could ever have and he loved her, she tried to feel the "butterflies in the stomach" in all possible ways, but when she thought she did her world stayed the normal grey-black colors.
They said making somebody happy will make you happy as well, she found the poorest family in town and built them a castle, she gave them money until they where crying of joy- she didn't feel a thing.   
She made people come from all parts of the world to tell her how to be happy. She followed their orders but never felt that burning ball of joy inside her.
But what was "happy" after all? Maybe she didn't really know what it meant and she had already felt it but she hadn't recognized it. Happy. A word that had already brought so much sadness to her. But she had to keep looking, she had to keep looking for that feeling that she thought would bring her to the gates of her heaven, a place so wonderful it outmatched the heavens of the gods. She kept looking as feverishly as she knew she would be looking for the rope that would curl around her neck if she knew she couldn't find it. And finally she did. She had decided to sail the world to find her happiness and was going in a forest- looking for the feeling of freedom and happiness they said you could find with nature. And she heard a voice. A clear, clear crystal voice that could break her into pieces. A voice that was singing a sad song she couldn't understand, but so pure, so immensely beautiful and pure that it made her heart stop. She tried to find the voice: it was the one of a young girl. So young, and as pure as her voice and song. She asked her to sing again, and again, and every-time she did the woman felt that chill, that all taking chill of happiness that she had been looking for so long.
She took her home with her, to her palace, she praised her and gave her all she could wish for, and she made her sing, all the time, everyday. And her voice and heart got filled with vanity- her voice lost the wonderful pureness and the woman never felt happy again when she heard it. She sailed the world again and again to find another beautiful voice, but never did.
She is still looking today, clinging on to the memory of these moments, but they slowly, slowly fade away...