Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Stay, not so fast!”
Sighingly answer'd him the streaming Rain.
“Destroyer, what hast thou created? Cast
On thy brief work (death, devastation, pain)
One glare—thy last!
Show me thy greatness. Is it yonder plain
Where thou hast pass'd,
Leaving behind thee hideous heaps of slain
And ruin vast?
Lo, with my little drops, I bless again
And beautify the fields which thou didst blast!
Rend, wither, waste, and ruin, what thou wilt,
But call not Greatness what the gods call Guilt.
Blossoms and grass from blood in battle spilt,
And poppied corn, I bring.
'Mid mouldering Babels, to Oblivion built,
My violets spring.
Little by little, my small drops have strength
To deck with green delights the grateful earth:
Little by little, to large seas at length
Small springs give birth:
By little things the growing world grows great,
And of great doings rests but little done:
From little fibres in the loom of Fate
Time's robe is spun:
Small are the cymbals that, when clasht, proclaim
The march of Force: from shafts of tiny stature

Co-operant atoms build the crystal frame
Of mighty Nature.
By little ducts Thought's widening river runs
Thro' nerve and brain, yet fills the ages vast,
And even the secret of the central suns
Invades at last:
In little waves light leaps from star to star:
Small pencils paint the welkin's azure pall:
And small life's primal universes are,
Yet they are all.”