Seven Little People and their Friends — John Shaqi
Seven Little People and their FriendsScudder, Horace Elisha
Science
Seven Little People and their Friends
Scudder, Horace Elisha
Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Fairies -- Juvenile fiction; Magic -- Juvenile fiction
As the wheel goes round--as the shuttle flies,
Let your songs and hearts upward, upward rise!
(_Chorus_) Work, hands! Love, heart!
Every one here has his part, etc.
They passed out of the hall, and the little sea green man said, "To the
Top!" So they came to the top of the house, and there they saw hundreds
and thousands of little coral insects, working to make the house more
beautiful, and each, when he had done all that he could, lay down and
died. And the little man told Effie how all this beautiful palace had
been made by these insects and how it never would stop growing, but
always some coral insect would be doing his tiny work, and when he had
done all he could, would die.
"What is that humming?" asked Effie.
"That is the song they sing as they work," said he. "Listen! do you not
hear it?" Effie listened hard and just caught a few words of the chorus.
"Every one here has his part----
Has his work to do, has his love to give,----
Thus we work, thus we love ever while we live."
"Why, that is what the maidens who were spinning sang," said she.
"Yes," said he, "they all sing the same song to different music." Then
she began to hear the words all about her, and she found that the little
sea green man, and the fishes, small and great, and the dolphins and the
old constable sword fish were all singing the same song, each in his own
way. So they went down again and through the whole palace and saw the
shells, some of them indeed making pearls, but all singing the same
song, and the sponges that were growing and the branches of coraline
that one by one loosened themselves and floated upward, singing as they
rose all about her, from corals and shells and grasses and sponges and
fishes, came this one song, each singing it to his own air, yet the
whole melody rising and sinking in a single harmonious strain.
Effie looked on at every thing in wonder, and at last they came back to
the Queen's presence. She, too, was singing with her maidens; but when
the procession came in again, and went through their bows once more, she
said to the little sea-green man--and their voices were all hushed:
"My faithful servant, have you shown the little maiden all the wonders
of the palace?"
"Yea, my good-loving Queen."
"And do they all spend their lives in good-working, singing as they
work?"
"Yea, my good-loving Queen, all;" and the hum of the song rose all about
her.
"Then back again lead the little child, and carry her to her home on
earth, that she too may live and work and sing. For
Every one _there_ has his part:
Has his work to do, has his love to give,"--
And all the voices sang with her
"Thus we work, thus we love ever while we live."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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