A SONG OF THE LITTLE DEAD
They carried little Wonder to a green churchyard, a place of kind old
trees and tender country bells. There were few birds to welcome her in
the grim November morning, but the grasses stole close and whispered
that very soon the thrush and the nightingale would be coming, that the
violets were already on their way, and that when May was there she
should lie all day in a bed of perfume.
For very dear to Nature's heart are the Little Dead. The great dead lie
imprisoned in escutcheoned vaults, but for the little dead Nature
spreads out soft small graves, all snowdrops and dewdrops, where
day-long they can feel the earth rocking them as in a cradle, and at
night hear the hushed singing of the stars.
Yes, Earth loves nothing so much as her little graves. There the tiny
bodies, like unexhausted censers, pour out all the stored sweetness they
had no time to use above the ground, turning the earth they lie in to
precious spices. There the roots of the old yew trees feel about
tenderly for the little unguided hands, and sometimes at nightfall the
rain bends over them weeping like an inconsolable mother.
It is on the little graves that the sun first rises at morn, and it is
there at evening that the moon lays softly her first silver flowers.
There the wren will sometimes bring her sky-blue eggs for a gift, and
the summer wind come sowing seeds of magic to take the fancy of the
little one beneath. Sometimes it shakes the hyacinths like a rattle of
silver, and spreads the turf above with a litter of coloured toys.
Here the butterflies are born with the first warm breath of the spring.
All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in the
carving of little names, and with the first spring day they stand
delicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves. There are
the honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timid
earth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small.
Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces on the broad blades
of the grasses, and in the cellars at their roots works many a humble
little slave of the mighty elements.
Yes, the emperors and the ants of Nature's vast economy alike love to be
kind to the little graves.