The Story Without an End (Austin, 1913)/Chapter 1
THE STORY WITHOUT AN END
I.
There was once a Child who lived in a little hut, and in the hut there was nothing but a little bed, and a looking-glass which hung in a dark corner. Now the Child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass, but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly through the casement and kissed his sweet eyelids, and the finch and the linnet waked him merrily with their morning songs, he arose, and went out into the green meadow. And he begged flour of the primrose, and sugar of the violet, and butter of the buttercup; he shook dewdrops from the cowslip into the cup of the harebell, spread out a large lime-leaf, set his little breakfast upon it, and feasted daintily. Sometimes he invited a humming-bee, oftener a gay butterfly, to partake of his feast; but his favourite guest was a blue dragon-fly. The bee murmured a good deal, in a solemn tone, about his riches; but the Child thought that if he were a bee, heaps of treasure would not make him gay and happy, and that it must be much more delightful and glorious to float about in the free and fresh breezes of spring, and to hum joyously in the web of the sunbeams, than, with heavy feet and heavy heart, to stow the silver wax and the golden honey into cells.
To this the butterfly assented, and he told how, once on a time, he too had been greedy and sordid; how he had thought of nothing but eating, and had never once turned his eyes upwards to the blue heavens. At length, however, a complete change had come over him, and instead of crawling spiritless about the dirty earth, half dreaming, he all at once awaked as out of a deep sleep. And now he could rise into the air; and it was his greatest joy sometimes to play with the light, and to reflect the heavens in the bright eyes of his wings; sometimes to listen to the soft language of the flowers, and catch their secrets. Such talk delighted the Child, and his breakfast was the sweeter to him, and the sunshine on leaf and flower seemed to him more bright and cheering.
But when the bee had flown off to beg from flower to flower, and the butterfly had fluttered away to his play-fellows, the dragon-fly still remained, poised on a blade of grass. Her slender and burnished body, more brightly and deeply blue than the deep blue sky, glistened in the sunbeam; and her net-like wings laughed at the flowers because they could not fly, but must stand still and abide the wind and the rain. The dragon-fly sipped a little of the Child’s clear dewdrops and blue violet honey, and then whispered her winged words. And the Child made an end of his repast, closed his dark blue eyes, bent down his beautiful head, and listened to the sweet prattle.
Then the dragon-fly told much of the merry life in the green wood; how sometimes she played hide-and-seek with her playfellows under the broad leaves of the oak and the beech trees, or hunt-the-hare along the surface of the still waters; sometimes quietly watched the sunbeams, as they flew busily from moss to flower and from flower to bush, and shed life and warmth over all. But at night, she said, the moonbeams glided softly around the wood, and dropped dew into the mouths of all the thirsty plants; and when the dawn pelted the slumberers with the soft roses of heaven, some of the half-drunken flowers looked up and smiled, but most of them could not so much as raise their heads for a long, long time.
Such stories did the dragon-fly tell; and as the Child sat motionless, with his eyes shut, and his head rested on his little hand, she thought he had fallen asleep; so she poised her double wings and flew into the rustling wood.