The dog walked off to play with a black beetle. The beetle was hard at work trying to roll home a great ball of dung it had been collecting all the morning; but Doss broke the ball, and ate the beetle’s hind legs, and then bit off its head. And it was all play, and no one could tell what it had lived and worked for. A striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing.
Olive Schreiner (The Story of an African Farm).
The author is depicting the sadness of life.
GRACE FOR A CHILD
Here a little child I stand,
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as Paddocks though they be, frogs
Here I lift them up to Thee,