Voice of Flowers/The Disobedient Pansy
THE DISOBEDIENT PANSY.
A pansy had many little ones. She talked much with them—daily instructing them, and set them a good example of sweet temper and humility.
She said often to them, "As soon as the great sun sinks away from you, and you feel the cool, fresh dews, compose yourself to rest. Look up smilingly, and breathe one sweet breath to Him who giveth the sun-beam, and the drops of dew.
When you have offered this, (the prayer of all good flowers,) fold your leaves, and bend your heads in sleep, for He will take care of you. The buds that thus early and piously go to rest, will flourish and be pleasing in His sight."
So her children obeyed her, all except one. This young pansy grew on rather a longer stalk than the others; and it said, "I wonder why my mother is thus always lecturing us?"
"I think I know as much as she. I do not like to go so early to bed. I have heard that those who have genius are always brightest when it is late. I wish to see how the world looks at midnight."
So she omitted her prayers, and strained her eyes open as wide as she could. Her brothers and sisters were quietly sleeping around her, and she laughed at what she called their stupidity.
By and by she began to grow tired, when suddenly a huge black spider seized her in his claws. She cried out in terror, but no one was awake to hear her.
He held her so tight that she could scarcely breathe, and tears stood in her large, dark eyes. In the gray dawn he spun a web over her face, and fastened it to a neighboring shrub.
Her mother awoke early, and lamented over her; "Oh, my poor daughter, would that I could help you! Perhaps He, to whom you forgot to pray, who is so good to all, may yet cause these chains to fall from you."
Bitterly did the young pansy deplore her disobedience. Her fright, and the spider's cords, with their tight lacing, had so compressed her heart and lungs, that she turned pale, and panted for breath.
When the noon-day sun beat fiercely upon her, she drooped and faded away—saying, with her last, faint sigh, "Oh! brothers and sisters, take warning by my sad fate. Never disobey our dear mother, for she is wiser than we."