Down in a deep recess of the loveliest valley upon the face of the
earth there was a tiny grotto cut in the solid crystal. The few rays
of light that penetrated through its deep shade, fixed in its vaulted
roof an unfading rainbow. Its floor was inlaid with many colored
pebbles of the smallest size, which Fairy hands had brought from the
neighboring stream. Its sides were hung with tapestry wrought by the
same delicate fingers, and in colors more vivid than ever dyed a
painter's brush, representing the benevolent deeds of the fairest and
kindest of their race. Here might be seen one of those beneficent
little creatures replacing, for the weary bee, the load of wax he had
lost in his flight; and another busied in scattering again, on the
wing of the restless butterfly, the golden dust which the gay
flutterer had brushed off by a too close contact with his own favorite
flower; and yet a third, unallured by beauty, but urged by kindness,
exerting all the energies of her delicate frame to assist the
industrious ant home with her heavy burthen. Within the grotto was a
couch formed by the bright feathers of the hummingbird; and, above it,
hung a canopy of film spun by Fairy hands before the first beams of
the morning sun could dissolve their work, and while yet every thread
was strung with pearls. But what was the beauty of the spot compared
with the excelling loveliness of her that dwelt within? She belonged
to the most fragile of all the race, one of those who are fabled to
have sunk beneath the weight of a single grain of wheat. The pencil of
no mortal artist would be delicate enough to trace her features, and
human language is too imperfect to describe the surpassing loveliness
of this ethereal being. The gossamer strung with tiny pearls, and
floating on the herbage of an autumnal morning, surpassed not in
lightness the ringlets on her shoulder; and her footstep could only be
traced by its displacing the golden dust from the flower, as she
tripped from petal to petal, giving them their colors with a brush
steeped in the dyes of Fairy-land. For her ministry was amidst the
brightest part of creation, and her happiness to do offices of
love--to raise the drooping head of the thirsty flower-cup, and bring
it the freshest dew-drop of the morning. To be prepared for her
ministry she had been placed by Titania upon this lower earth--but she
was first bathed in the fountain of Oblivion, and thus separated from
her former existence. Yet there still remained in her soul some faint
recollections of the land of her home, falling upon her spirit sweet
as the dying strains of music sometimes wafted to the wanderer from
his native shore when he is leaving it forever. Still there was a void
left in the soul of this Fairy inhabitant of earth. The yearnings of
her heart told her she was an exile, though she knew not the land
whence she came. Her Queen, in pity to her loneliness, formed for her
a being suited to her love. On awakening one morning she beheld at the
door of her grotto the loveliest object upon which her eyes had ever
rested. It was that brightest of flowers, the _Lily of the
Valley_--but such a one as never before sprung from the dark bosom of
the earth. The dazzling purity of its blossoms seemed to mingle like
moonbeams with the twilight of the morning, and its delicate green
stem bent gently towards her as if seeking her affection. When the
rising rays of the sun pierced even the depths of this shadowy valley,
the soft green leaves of the Lily shaded the grotto from their
influence.
It would be impossible to describe the love that filled the heart of
our little Fairy for the beautiful flower--for we have not yet known
what it is to be alone in a strange world without a kindred tie, or
any thing to which the heart can cling, and which it may claim for its
own. Now this was the Fairy's flower. She had not gone to seek it, but
it had sprung up on her own threshold. All the day long was now bright
to her. Her first thoughts, when she awoke, were to see if her Lily
still stood in its loveliness before her, and then she moistened her
lips with the dew that hung ever freshly from its silvery bells. The
days rolled on, and our little Fairy heeded not their course. She knew
not that they were bearing with them the brightness of Spring--for her
existence had known no Winter. But heeded or unheeded, the days rolled
on. Spring and Summer were gone, and Autumn was fading into Winter.
The dazzling brightness of the Lily deepened into an unearthly hue,
and its head was bowed with more than pensive grace. It was a bright
morning, towards the last of Autumn, when our Fairy, awakening, looked
towards her lovely favorite. But it was gone. She arose in haste, and
beheld only a little heap of dust where her flower once grew. Alas!
words cannot describe the anguish of her heart. There was a
darkness--a mystery--in the fate of her beloved, which she could not
unravel, and it fell so coldly upon her spirit, that she believed
Winter was enclosing her heart also in its frost-work, and she wept
for another home, where winter should come no more. But at length the
destroyer passed away, and the bright things of the earth shot up
again to meet the joyous Springtime. The voice of gladness was heard
once more from the lofty mountain to the humble valley. Our little
Fairy felt its influence--she felt the frost-work melt from her heart,
and she wondered if she could love any flower again as she had loved
her departed Lily.
And again, almost in the same spot, there sprung up a _Heart's Ease_,
so bright and glowing that it seemed the very offspring of Joy. At
first our Fairy would not trust herself to love it. She remembered
that Winter would come again, and she thought, too, the new flower
wanted the loveliness of her Lily. But invariably her heart smiled
beneath its influence, and there was Springtime once more in her soul.
The recollection of Winter passed from her mind, as the ice before the
sun. But again Summer ripened into Autumn, and that, in its turn, was
changed into Winter, and again the little Fairy was left alone. She
beheld one morning her bright little gem of a flower set in the
brilliants of frost, and sparkling as gaily as if the light still came
from within. She hastened to dissolve with her breath the diamond
fetters of her favorite, but alas! their weight had been too heavy for
the little creature, and it fell with them to rise no more.
The Fairy wept--but not so bitterly as erewhile. She knew the Spring
would come again with fresh flowers; and when it _did_ come she beheld
a sweet _Mignonette_ spring up on her threshold, but so different in
beauty from her former favorites that she turned from it in
disappointment. Yet when the humble flower filled her grotto with
fragrance, and insensibly its {78} sweetness stole into her heart, and
possessed it with a delightful tranquillity she had never experienced
before, her soul fainted within her when she remembered that Winter
would snatch away from her _this_ loved one as it had done her _other_
loved ones before. And in truth, but a few brief months, and the blast
had swept over this fragile flower, leaving no trace of its existence
but the perfume it exhaled with its last breath, on the gale that bore
it into eternity.
Now it was that our poor little Fairy felt a dreariness, not to be
shaken off, fall heavily upon her spirits. She wished no longer for
Spring. She wished never again to fix her heart upon the perishing
flowers of Earth. The shadow of mortality seemed to have fallen even
upon her bright little grotto, and she sighed for another home.
And now the time of her sojourn was over. Lying down upon her downy
couch she slept. After a while, opening her eyes, she found herself in
Fairy-land, and her heart told her that this was indeed her home.
Those dim recollections of a former existence that had formerly
floated in her mind, now revived with all the vividness of reality;
and what she had believed to be but ideal forms of beauty, she now
found to be the images of things familiar in a previous state of
being. Even her beloved Lily, so fair yet so fleeting, was but the
type of one that grew in Fairy-land in glorious and imperishable
beauty. She saw here, too, thousands of her own race busied in
gathering up the evanescent sweets of earthly flowers to embody them
in forms of divine loveliness, unchangeable by the frosts of Winter,
and springing up forever in sempiternal beauty. And now our Fairy was,
for the first time, a happy Fairy. The longings of her heart were
satisfied. She was an exile no more. She had found a home utterly free
from the chilling shadows of mortality.