Part I: The Splendid Secret

Now father stood engaged in talkWith mother on that narrow walkBetween the laurels (where we playAt Red-skins lurking for their prey)And the grey old wall of rosesWhere the Persian kitten dozesAnd the sunlight sleeps uponCrannies of the crumbling stone--So hot it is you scarce can bearYour naked hand upon it there,Though there luxuriating in heatWith a slow and gorgeous beatWhite-winged currant-moths displayTheir spots of black and gold all day.--

Well, since we greatly wished to knowWhether we too might some day goWhere little Peterkin had goneWithout one word and all alone,We crept up through the laurels thereHoping that we might overhearThe splendid secret, darkly great,Of Peterkin's mysterious fate;And on what high adventure boundHe left our pleasant garden-ground,Whether for old Japan once moreHe voyaged from the dim blue shore,Or whether he set out to runBy candle-light to Babylon.

We just missed something father saidAbout a young prince that was dead,A little warrior that had foughtAnd failed: how hopes were brought to noughtHe said, and mortals made to bowBefore the Juggernaut of Death,And all the world was darker now,For Time's grey lips and icy breathHad blown out all the enchanted lightsThat burned in Love's Arabian nights;And now he could not understandMother's mystic fairy-land,"Land of the dead, poor fairy-tale,"He murmured, and her face grew pale,And then with great soft shining eyesShe leant to him--she looked so wise--And, with her cheek against his cheek,We heard her, ah so softly, speak.

"Husband, there was a happy day,Long ago, in love's young May,When with a wild-flower in your handYou echoed that dead poet's cry--'Little flower, but if I could understand!'And you saw it had roots in the depths of the sky,And there in that smallest bud lay furledThe secret and meaning of all the world."

He shook his head and then he triedTo kiss her, but she only criedAnd turned her face away and said,"You come between me and my dead!His soul is near me, night and day,But you would drive it far away;And you shall never kiss me nowUntil you lift that brave old browOf faith I know so well; or elseRefute the tale the skylark tells,Tarnish the glory of that May,Explain the Smallest Flower away."And still he said, "Poor fairy-tales,How terribly their starlight palesBefore the solemn sun of truthThat rises o'er the grave of youth!"

"Is heaven a fairy-tale?" she said,--And once again he shook his head;And yet we ne'er could understandWhy heaven should not be fairy-land,A part of heaven at least, and whyThe thought of it made mother cry,And why they went away so sad,And father still quite unforgiven,For what could children be but gladTo find a fairy-land in heaven?

And as we talked it o'er we foundOur brains were really spinning round;But Dick, our eldest, late returnedFrom school, by all the lore he'd learnedDeclared that we should seek the lostSmallest Flower at any cost.For, since within its leaves lay furledThe secret of the whole wide world,He thought that we might learn thereinThe whereabouts of Peterkin;And, if we found the Flower, we knewFather would be forgiven, too;And mother's kiss atone for allThe quarrel by the rose-hung wall;We knew, not how we knew not why,But Dick it was who bade us try,Dick made it all seem plain and clear,And Dick it is who helps us hereTo tell this tale of fairy-landIn words we scarce can understand.For ere another golden hourHad passed, our anxious parents foundWe'd left the scented garden-groundTo seek--the Smallest Flower.