The Story of a Dewdrop by John R. Macduff (ebook reader ink .txt) 📖

caps; others smiled bewitchingly; others could do nothing but waft sweet perfumes. There were even bands of very varied music and musicians, all assisting with their efforts in swelling the Queen's Anthem. The brook, though it had sung all night, and had need of a little respite, seemed to say-"No, I shall go warbling on; she shall have my very best treble of a ripple." And then there were minor performers in this nature-choir. The Blackbird and Redbreast, Goldfinch and Linnet, and Chaffinch, each took part with striking effect. Even the Swallow in his own quiet way twittered, and the Tomtit chattered, and the Beetle droned, and the Bee hummed, and the big Dragon-fly, in armour of brightest cobalt, whirred; and the Grasshopper, poor fellow! did his very uttermost,-he chirruped, he could do no more. The Butterfly, who could not raise a single note, came out in his best plush court-dress of gold, vermilion, and blue, dainty little silent outrider that he is, waking up any exceptional sleepers. He carried, truth to say, his zeal sometimes too far; as when I saw him unjustly reproaching the Foxglove for having bells and not ringing them, a thing they were never meant to do. Even the Spider hung his silver-tissued web from spray to spray; as if he had weaved a gossamer mantle, in case his Queen might like to use it in the chill of early dawn. (See Frontispiece.)

Well, the latter-I mean the Queen-at last came to a pause, and, with most radiant grace in her countenance, she put her hand up to her crown, and took out the diamond. There was a little pet of a crimson cloud that happened to be floating past at the moment. She laid the lustrous gem on this roseate pillow; and then, slowly and gradually, she and all her retainers, in ghostly shape, vanished clean from sight.

* * * * *

But what, you will say, has all this to do with our friend the Lark? His quick little eye had discerned what your dull sight and mine could not. He had watched everything I have now described. How indeed could he miss seeing that flashing speck of light lying so daintily on its cushion of state? No wonder he circles and zigzags, and does bird-homage to the brightest gem of the Regalia. Up, down-hither, thither-just as I have already told, doing obeisance in every possible and conceivable way; till at last, poising himself immediately above, fluttering with all his might, and settling himself in the fixed attitude in which the lark family are such adepts, he mustered up courage and said-

"Pretty sparkling thing! I know what you are. You are a rare diamond just taken from the crown of the Queen of the Morning. But, I confess, you look, too, very like the Dewdrop I spied at a distance, a few hours ago, on the tip of a rose-leaf."

"What a capital guesser you are, tiny minstrel," was the reply; "but you had better leave me with my diamond name, at all events for the present. I shall not say whether some scientific bird-winged philosophers are right or wrong when they aver that, though the Queen of the Morning borrowed me, I am really and truly a jewel from the crown of the Sun; that when he took off his royal robes last evening, to lay his head on his nightly pillow, I dropped out of his crown, and tumbled down to the earth. I may tell you, however, confidentially (just in a whisper, you know)," added the brilliant speaker, "that though they call me Diamond, I like quite as well the name with which God's beautiful mist baptized me, that of Dewdrop. But I have brief time (indeed no time) to converse further with you now. You have seen, a short while ago, how the Queen of the Morning vanished. Will you be astonished when I tell you that I am about to do the very same myself? I am going," it continued, "to my Palace yonder" (an extra gleam, in the absence of a finger, was its own special way of pointing upwards). "I have said my Palace-I should rather perhaps say, my Home. We may meet," it added, "pretty soaring warbler, on the way to it. But please leave me now."

What I have said of the Thrush was true also of the Lark. He was a peculiarly biddable and discreet bird, and when he got a hint he always took it. Moreover, the Dewdrop had spoken so courteously (he thought condescendingly) to him, he would not for the world intrude his company longer than desired. The other evidently wished to be all alone, to pack up and prepare for this great and distant journey.

So the Lark plunged down to the stream among the alders to bathe his wings and refresh himself. After the lustrations were duly completed, up again he rose like an arrow into the bright, blue sky. Says he to himself, "I shall certainly be on the sharp out-look for that ascent of the Dewdrop. I can at all events be a silent spectator, if my services cannot otherwise be of use." And, to be sure, he did not require to watch long; for, with that keenness of perception that belonged to all his ancestors, he found that he had soared right into the very midst of a golden mist. Some people say and believe (though I am not wise enough in bird-lore to know the truth of it), that the lark family have eyes almost like a microscope; things invisible to us are said to be quite visible, and indeed conspicuous, to them. At all events, this was true in the case of the present representative of that discriminating race. So that what, if we had been there, would only have seemed an aggregation of glistening atoms, were to him nothing less than a vast army in visible shape-chariots and charioteers, knights mounted on steeds with white trappings and gold and silver bridles; other horsemen carrying glittering spears, polished shields, and flashing swords; others bearing standards of cloth of gold. I am only telling you what the Lark saw, or thought he saw; and a most wonderful army on march you can very well believe it was.


Oh, just see how he twitters and carols, as I have more than once pictured, and cannot do so too often-shaking first his little wings, and then his little throat; the old zigzagging to and fro-here, there, everywhere-whisking in this direction, and bouncing in that direction, restless gymnastic that he is, in a very whirl and vortex of excitement!

"You told me, a little while ago," said he, mustering up courage, with an effort, to speak to this wondrous mass of knight-errantry; "at all events the Diamond-drop, of which I know you are the fragments, told me you were going to some Palace in the sky. Where is that?"

"It is our Home, soaring warbler," said the million million little voices, their spears and helmets flashing brightly in the radiance, their horses prancing and pawing the path of light-"It is Home, Home, Home!" said the myriads, the very air tremulous with the shout.

"Yes, but where is that?" repeated the Lark, determined to come to the point, and not to be numerically extinguished, as he darted like lightning round and round the brilliant host.

"The Sun! the Sun!" one after another made answer. The Dewdrop was a tear that fell from the sky because the Sun was gone. But, as you have just told us, we are all parts of it-everyone of us are; and we are on our way again to the golden entrance to his Palace.

The army of misty globules rose and rose, higher and yet higher. They seemed, too, to get brighter and brighter in the ascent, the Lark rising with them, indeed till his little wings were tired. Then when he felt that he could act as convoy no farther, down he came at one long unpausing dart to the furrow adjoining the wooded dell below, which was now all streaked with fleckered light. He thought (and we shall not quarrel with the fancy) that these patches of light were nothing else than the golden arrows he had seen shot from the bow of the Cherubs-the little Angels of the Dawn-and that they were now lying thick in the green arcade. He just took breath, after the exhaustion and excitement, alike of both body and mind, which his aerial adventure had entailed; and then hastened straight to the home of the Nightingale and Thrush, to tell of the glorious ascent (what the old and learned creatures of the earth would have called the apotheosis) of the Dewdrop on the rose-leaf; its severance into a million fragments; and how these, in the shape of a great army, had marched right within

THE SUN'S GOLDEN GATES!


AFTERWORDS.

An Angel's Whisper.


The Soul-the Spirit of Man-apart from the Great Sun, becomes a teardrop. All is dark to it, when that All-glorious Source of Light and Love is away. Earth's sweetest songs cannot cheer it. But when the morning comes, and the Sun returns, the teardrop becomes a Dewdrop-gleaming like a diamond in that peerless radiance. And at death, when it seems to be dissolved, and has apparently vanished from sight, it is exhaled-not annihilated. It passes upward to the Golden Gates, to be lost in the splendour of THE EVERLASTING LIGHT!

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Publication Date: 05-21-2008

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