“But I am young,” a tender blossom said, “and I shall be cut off. The frost will slay me and I shall have rattled down to dust ere my soul has developed its immortal parts.”
At the moment I was taking honey from its lips, and I felt a quivering as if its heart fluttered.
“Dear little flower,” I said, “you are living your life; you cannot die; you will be swallowed up in the universal spirit of things. Your face has spread a glamour of gold in the world; your honey has nourished a thousand winged things; your scented breath has floated far and has carried blessings into silent places. Memory of you will linger; it will be preserved by the things you have fed, by the things you have gladdened. And, too, I promise that I shall remember you!”
“How can you remember me,” the flower asked, “when you, too, are doomed?”
“What!” I cried. “Doomed! Why, I am young, I am swift, I am beautiful, I am glorious!”
“Yes, and so am I. But we pass.”
“You are wise for so young a flower,” spoke up the elder blossom. “Both of you are of the heavens; both have your lives before you in this tiny garden, ere you return to the golden fields that spread out toward the sun. You are immortal.”
Just then I saw one of the petals blow away from the face of the elder flower. It fluttered and fluttered and finally fell to the earth. Scarcely had it struck the ground when something with a long, thin body and active legs seized it and began struggling to draw it through the grass, intent on some mysterious purpose. I was quite absorbed, and from my post of vantage on the breast of the floweret I followed the movements of the thing that tugged at the petal. I had never seen this thing before and I was wishing for Crip, when, behold! he appeared.
“What are you doing?” he cried at me. “How many loads have you gathered? What are you staring at?”
He had submerged me with questions. I answered none of them. I had, indeed, forgotten my work momentarily, so absorbed had I been in the talk of the flowers.