quiet bliss the tiny creature, on one
of the great fresh oak leaves; and then the tree always said:

"Poor little thing! Your whole life is but a single day! How very
short! It's quite melancholy!"

"Melancholy! Why do you say that?" the Ephemera would then always
reply. "It's wonderfully bright, warm, and beautiful all around me,
and that makes me rejoice!"

"But only one day, and then it's all done!"

"Done!" repeated the Ephemera. "What's the meaning of _done_? Are you
_done_, too?"

"No; I shall perhaps live for thousands of your days, and my day is
whole seasons long! It's something so long, that you can't at all
manage to reckon it out."

"No? then I don't understand you. You say you have thousands of my
days; but I have thousands of moments, in which I can be merry and
happy. Does all the beauty of this world cease when you die?"

"No," replied the Tree; "it will certainly last much longer--far
longer than I can possibly think."

"Well, then, we have the same time, only that we reckon differently."

And the Ephemera danced and floated in the air, and rejoiced in her
delicate wings of gauze and velvet, and rejoiced in the balmy breezes
laden with the fragrance of meadows and of wild roses and
elder-flowers, of the garden hedges, wild thyme, and mint, and
daisies; the scent of these was all so strong that the Ephemera was
almost intoxicated. The day was long and beautiful, full of joy and of
sweet feeling, and when the sun sank low the little fly felt very
agreeably tired of all its happiness and enjoyment. The delicate wings
would not carry it any more, and quietly and slowly it glided down
upon the soft grass blade, nodded its head as well as it could nod,
and went quietly to sleep--and was dead.

"Poor little Ephemera!" said the Oak. "That was a terribly short
life!"

And on every summer day the same dance was repeated, the same question
and answer, and the same sleep. The same thing was repeated through
whole generations of ephemera, and all of them felt equally merry and
equally happy.

The Oak stood there awake through the spring morning, the noon of
summer, and the evening of autumn; and its time of rest, its night,
was coming on apace. Winter was approaching.

Already the storms were singing their "good night, good night!" Here
fell a leaf, and there fell a leaf.

"We'll rock you, and dandle you! Go to sleep, go to sleep! We sing you
to sleep, we shake you to sleep, but it does you good i