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The Rose And The Thrush
by
The thrush did not pester the rose with his protestations of love. He was not a particularly proud fellow, but he thought too much of the rose to vex her with his pleadings. But all day long he would perch in the thicket and sing his songs as only a thrush can sing to the beautiful rose he loves. He sung, we will say, of the forests he had explored, of the famous river he had once seen, of the dew which the rose loved, of the storm-king that slew the old pine and made his cones into a crown,–he sung of a thousand things which we might not understand, but which pleased the rose because she understood them. And one day the thrush swooped down from the linden upon a monstrous devil’s darning-needle that came spinning along and poised himself to stab the beautiful rose. Yes, like lightning the thrush swooped down on this murderous monster, and he bit him in two, and I am glad of it, and so are you if your heart be not wholly callous.
“How comes it,” said the rose-tree to the thrush that day,–“how comes it that you do not woo my daughter? You have shown that you love her; why not speak to her?”
“No, I will wait,” answered the thrush. “She has many wooers, and each wooes her in his own way. Let me show her by my devotion that I am worthy of her, and then perchance she will listen kindly to me when I speak to her.”
The rose-tree thought very strange of this; in all her experience of bringing out her fair daughters into society she had never before had to deal with so curious a lover as the thrush. She made up her mind to speak for him.
“My daughter,” said she to the rose, “the thrush loves you; of all your wooers he is the most constant and the most amiable. I pray that you will hear kindly to his suit.”
The rose laughed carelessly,–yes, merrily,–as if she heeded not the heartache which her indifference might cause the honest thrush.
“Mother,” said the rose, “these suitors are pestering me beyond all endurance. How can I have any patience with the south wind, who is forever importuning me with his sentimental sighs and melancholy wheezing? And as for that old hoptoad, Mr. Roughbrown,–why, it is a husband I want, not a father!”
“Prince Beambright pleases you, then?” asked the rose-tree.
“He is a merry, capering fellow,” said the daughter, “and so is his friend Dewlove; but I do not fancy either. And as for the thrush who sends you to speak for him,–why, he is quite out of the question, I assure you. The truth is, mother, that I am to fill a higher station than that of bride to any of these simple rustic folk. Am I not more beautiful than any of my companions, and have I not ambitions above all others of my kind?”
“Whom have you seen that you talk so vain-gloriously?” cried the rose-tree in alarm. “What flattery has instilled into you this fatal poison?”
“Have you not seen the poet who comes this way every morning?” asked the rose. “His face is noble, and he sings grandly to the pictures Nature spreads before his eyes. I should be his bride. Some day he will see me; he will bear me away upon his bosom; he will indite to me a poem that shall live forever!”
These words the thrush heard, and his heart sank within him. If his songs that day were not so blithe as usual it was because of the words that the rose had spoken. Yet the thrush sang on, and his song was full of his honest love.
It was the next morning that the poet came that way. He lived in the city, but each day he stole away from the noise and crowd of the city to commune with himself and with Nature in the quiet valley where bloomed the rose-tree, where the thrush sung, and where dwelt the fays and the elves of whom it has been spoken. The sun shone fiercely; withal the quiet valley was cool, and the poet bared his brow to the breeze that swept down the quiet valley from the lake over yonder.