So that I shall be happy even when the reapers cut me
down, because I know it is for you, and your people, my love. The strong
men will come to us gladly, and the women, and the little children will
sit in the shade and gather great white trumpets of convolvulus, and come
to tell their mothers how they saw the young partridges in the next
field. But there is one thing we do not like, and that is, all the labour
and the misery. Why cannot your people have us without so much labour,
and why are so many of you unhappy? Why cannot they be all happy with us
as you are, dear? For hundreds and hundreds of years now the wheat every
year has been sorrowful for your people, and I think we get more
sorrowful every year about it, because as I was telling you just now the
flowers go, and the swallows go, the old, old oaks go, and that oak will
go, under the shade of which you are lying, Guido; and if your people do
not gather the flowers now, and watch the swallows, and listen to the
blackbirds whistling, as you are listening now while I talk, then Guido,
my love, they will never pick any flowers, nor hear any birds' songs.
They think they will, they think that when they have toiled, and worked a
long time, almost all their lives, then they will come to the flowers,
and the birds, and be joyful in the sunshine.
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