The Glow-Worm

A tiny atom found itself a living thing by chance. Aquiver with life’s ardour it began a moth-like dance, and set aglow the night’s expanse.

A dormant sunbeam re-awoke and shot up with a dash. The alchemy of life converted it to gold from trash came vision to it in a flash.

A restlessly aflutter moth was bold enough to dart into the candle’s flame, became one with its fiery heart, and ceased to be a thing apart.

A moon-faced starlet, living in its isolated bower, came out of it in order to look closer at the lower planet than from its high tower.

A gently beaming moonlet told itself that it would owe its light no longer to the bounty of the sun, and so wherever it likes it can go.

O glow-worm, your whole body is made of the stuff of light. A sequence of its intermittent flashes is your flight – thus flit things in and out of sight.

You are a torch for birds that in the evening fly to rest; but what and whence this restless passion burning in your breast, which keeps you in unceasing quest?

Like you we entered into this world by earth’s dusty door. We saw and tossed about; we did not see, and tossed about the more. O never did we reach the shore.

I speak from ripe experience and true is what I say, don’t think of lost horizons and be steadfast on your way: Keep shining like this while you may.