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The cairn

Chapter 127: To the May Fly.
By Lady Sarah Davison Nicolas
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Essays, Letters & Speeches

About This Book

A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.

To the May Fly.

Thou art a frail and lively thing
Engender’d by the sun;
A moment only on the wing,
And thy career is done.
Thou sportest in the evening beam
An hour—an age to thee—
In gaiety above the stream
Which soon thy grave must be.
Although thy life is like to thee,
An atom—art thou not
Far happier than thou e’er could’st be,
If long life were thy lot?
For then deep pangs might wound thy breast,
And make thee wish for death;
But as it is thou’rt soon at rest,
Thou creature of a breath!
And man’s life passeth thus away,
A thing of joy and sorrow;
The earth he treads upon to-day
Shall cover him to-morrow.

“As the sun declines the misnamed ‘May-fly’ is to be seen emerging from the surface of shallow streams, and lying there for a time till its wings are dried for flight. Escaping after a protracted struggle of half a minute from its watery birth place, it flutters restlessly up and down over the same spot during its whole era of a summer evening, and at last dies as the last streaks of day are leaving the western horizon. Yet, who shall say, that in that space of time it has not undergone all the vicissitudes of a long and eventful life? That it has not felt all the freshness of youth, all the vigour of maturity, all the weakness and satiety of old age, and all the pangs of death itself? In short, who shall satisfy us that any essential difference exists between its four hours, and our fourscore years?”