Explore "The Tendril's Fate" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Under the snow, in the dark and the cold, / A pale little sprout was humming; / Sweetly it sang, 'neath the frozen mould, / Of the beautiful days that were coming.
"How foolish your songs! " said a lump of clay; / "What is there, I ask, to prove them? / Just look at the walls between you and the day, / Now, have you the strength to move them?"
But under the ice and under the snow / The pale little sprout kept singing, / "I cannot tell how, but I know, I know, / I know what the days are bringing.
"Birds, and blossoms, and buzzing bees, / Blue, blue skies above me, / Bloom on the meadows and buds on the trees / And the great glad sun to love me."
A pebble spoke next: "You are quite absurd," / It said, "with your song's insistence; / For _I_ never saw a tree or a bird, / So of course there are none in existence."
"But I know, I know," the tendril cried, / In beautiful sweet unreason; / Till lo! from its prison, glorified, / It burst in the glad spring season.