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.
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