The Daisy

Now listen! Out in the country, close by the road, there was a summer cottage. You must have seen it yourself! In front of it was a little garden full of flowers and a painted fence. Close by, at the edge of the ditch, in the middle of the lovely green grass, grew a little daisy. The sun shone just as warmly and brightly on it as on the big, rich flowers in the garden, and so it grew hour by hour.

One morning it stood fully open; its little, snow-white, shining petals stood like rays around the little golden sun in the middle. It never thought that nobody saw it down there in the grass, that it was a poor, humble flower. No, it was quite content; it turned straight towards the warm sun, looked up at it and listened to the skylark singing in the air.

The little daisy was as happy as if it were a great holiday, and yet it was only a Monday. All the children were at school. While they sat at their desks learning things, the daisy sat on its green stalk and learned from the warm sun and from everything around it how good God is. And it thought that the little lark sang so clearly and beautifully everything that the daisy felt in silence. The daisy looked up with a kind of awe at the happy bird that could fly and sing, but it was not at all sad that it could not do so itself. "I can see and hear!" it thought. "The sun shines on me and the wind kisses me! Oh, how lucky I am!"

Inside the fence stood many proud, showy flowers. The less scent they had, the grander they looked. The peonies puffed themselves up to be bigger than a rose, but size is not what matters! The tulips had the most splendid colours, and they knew it very well. They held themselves very straight so as to be seen better. They did not look at the little daisy outside at all, but the daisy looked at them all the more and thought: "How rich and beautiful they are! Yes, that lovely bird is sure to fly down and visit them! Thank God I'm close enough to see it!"

Just then, "Quirrevit!" the lark came flying down, but not to the peonies and tulips, no, down into the grass, to the poor daisy. The daisy was so startled with joy that it did not know what to think. The little bird danced around it and sang: "Oh, how soft the grass is! Look, what a sweet little flower, with gold in its heart and silver on its dress!" The yellow centre of the daisy really did look like gold, and the little petals around it shone silvery white.

No one can imagine how happy the little daisy was! The bird kissed it with its beak, sang to it and then rose again into the blue sky. It was more than a quarter of an hour before the daisy recovered. A little shyly, but very happy inside, it looked at the other flowers in the garden; they must have seen the honour and happiness that had come to it, they must understand what a great joy it was. But the tulips stood even stiffer than before, and their faces were pointed and red, because they were annoyed. The peonies looked sulky too; it was a good thing they could not speak, or the daisy would have got a good scolding. The poor little flower could see they were not in a good mood, and that made it very sad.

Just then a girl came into the garden with a big, sharp, shining knife. She went straight in among the tulips and cut them off one by one. "Oh," sighed the little daisy, "how dreadful! Now it's all over with them." The girl went away with the tulips. The daisy was glad and grateful that it was outside in the grass and was only a little flower. When the sun went down it folded its petals, fell asleep and dreamed all night of the sun and the little bird.

The next morning, when the flower happily stretched out its white petals like little arms to the air and light again, it recognised the bird's voice, but the song it sang was very sad. Yes, the poor lark had good reason to be sad: it had been caught, and now it sat in a cage by the open window. In its song it told of being able to fly free and happy, of the green corn in the fields, and of the lovely journeys it had made with its wings high up in the sky. The poor bird was not in a good mood at all; it sat captive in the cage.

The little daisy would so much have liked to help, but how? That was hard to find. It quite forgot how lovely everything around it was, how warmly the sun shone, how beautifully white its own petals were. Oh, it could only think of the captive bird, for whom it could do nothing.

Just then two little boys came out of the garden. One of them had a big, sharp knife like the one the girl had used to cut the tulips. They came straight to the little daisy standing in the grass. "We can cut a nice piece of turf here for the lark," said one, and he began to push the knife deep into the earth, cutting a square around the daisy so that it was right in the middle of the piece of turf. "Pick the flower!" said the other boy, and the daisy trembled with fear, for being picked meant losing its life, and now it wanted to live; it was going to be put into the captive bird's cage with the piece of turf. "No, leave it," said the other, "it looks so nice." So the daisy stayed and was put into the lark's cage.

But the poor bird cried loudly for its lost freedom and beat its wings against the wires of the cage. The little daisy could not speak, could not say a single word of comfort to it, much as it wanted to. So the whole morning passed. "There's no water here," said the captive lark. "They've all gone out and left me without a drop to drink. My throat is dry and burning! There is fire and ice inside me, and the air is so heavy! Oh, I must die, I must leave the warm sunshine, the fresh green, all the beauty God has made!"

Then it buried its beak in the cool turf to refresh itself a little. Its eye fell on the daisy, and the bird nodded to it, kissed it and said: "You must wither here too, poor little flower! They have given me you and the little patch of green grass in place of the whole world outside! Every little blade of grass must be a green tree to me, every one of your white petals a fragrant flower! Oh, you only tell me how much I have lost!" "If only I could comfort it!" thought the daisy, but it could not move a single petal. But the scent that rose from its delicate petals was much stronger than such a flower usually has. The bird noticed it too, and though it was faint with thirst and in its pain tore up the green blades of grass, it never touched the flower.

Evening came, and nobody came to bring the poor bird a drop of water. It spread its lovely wings and beat them in its distress. Its song turned into a pitiful chirp. It bent its little head towards the flower, and the bird's heart broke with longing and pain. Nor could the flower fold its petals and sleep as it had the evening before; ill and sad, it hung its head towards the ground.

The boys did not come until the next morning. When they saw that the bird was dead, they cried a great deal, shed many tears and dug a pretty grave for it. They decorated the grave with flower petals. The bird's body was put in a pretty red box; they were going to bury it like a king. Poor bird! While it lived and sang they had forgotten it and left it to suffer in the cage. Now they mourned it and shed tears for it.

But the piece of turf with the daisy was thrown out onto the dusty road. Nobody thought of the daisy, which had cared most for the bird and had wanted most of all to comfort it.