The Story of a Dewdrop | Page 7

use." And, to be sure, he did not require to watch long; for, with that keenness of perception that belonged to all his ancestors, he found that he had soared right into the very midst of a golden mist. Some people say and believe (though I am not wise enough in bird-lore to know the truth of it), that the lark family have eyes almost like a microscope; things invisible to us are said to be quite visible, and indeed conspicuous, to them. At all events, this was true in the case of the present representative of that discriminating race. So that what, if we had been there, would only have seemed an aggregation of glistening atoms, were to him nothing less than a vast army in visible shape--chariots and charioteers, knights mounted on steeds with white trappings and gold and silver bridles; other horsemen carrying glittering spears, polished shields, and flashing swords; others bearing standards of cloth of gold. I am only telling you what the Lark saw, or thought he saw; and a most wonderful army on march you can very well believe it was.
[Illustration]
Oh, just see how he twitters and carols, as I have more than once pictured, and cannot do so too often--shaking first his little wings, and then his little throat; the old zigzagging to and fro--here, there, everywhere--whisking in this direction, and bouncing in that direction, restless gymnastic that he is, in a very whirl and vortex of excitement!
"You told me, a little while ago," said he, mustering up courage, with an effort, to speak to this wondrous mass of knight-errantry; "at all events the Diamond-drop, of which I know you are the fragments, told me you were going to some Palace in the sky. Where is that?"
"It is our Home, soaring warbler," said the million million little voices, their spears and helmets flashing brightly in the radiance, their horses prancing and pawing the path of light--"It is Home, Home, Home!" said the myriads, the very air tremulous with the shout.
"Yes, but where is that?" repeated the Lark, determined to come to the point, and not to be numerically extinguished, as he darted like lightning round and round the brilliant host.
"The Sun! the Sun!" one after another made answer. The Dewdrop was a tear that fell from the sky because the Sun was gone. But, as you have just told us, we are all parts of it--everyone of us are; and we are on our way again to the golden entrance to his Palace.
The army of misty globules rose and rose, higher and yet higher. They seemed, too, to get brighter and brighter in the ascent, the Lark rising with them, indeed till his little wings were tired. Then when he felt that he could act as convoy no farther, down he came at one long unpausing dart to the furrow adjoining the wooded dell below, which was now all streaked with fleckered light. He thought (and we shall not quarrel with the fancy) that these patches of light were nothing else than the golden arrows he had seen shot from the bow of the Cherubs--the little Angels of the Dawn--and that they were now lying thick in the green arcade. He just took breath, after the exhaustion and excitement, alike of both body and mind, which his aerial adventure had entailed; and then hastened straight to the home of the Nightingale and Thrush, to tell of the glorious ascent (what the old and learned creatures of the earth would have called the apotheosis) of the Dewdrop on the rose-leaf; its severance into a million fragments; and how these, in the shape of a great army, had marched right within
THE SUN'S GOLDEN GATES!
[Illustration]

AFTERWORDS.
An Angel's Whisper.
The Soul--the Spirit of Man--apart from the Great Sun, becomes a teardrop. All is dark to it, when that All-glorious Source of Light and Love is away. Earth's sweetest songs cannot cheer it. But when the morning comes, and the Sun returns, the teardrop becomes a Dewdrop--gleaming like a diamond in that peerless radiance. And at death, when it seems to be dissolved, and has apparently vanished from sight, it is exhaled--not annihilated. It passes upward to the Golden Gates, to be lost in the splendour of THE EVERLASTING LIGHT!
[Illustration]

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