The Discontented Lily

Once upon a time there was a lily which stood in a secluded spot beside a little purling stream and was well know to some nettles and a few other tiny flowers in the neighborhood. The lily, according to the
veracious description of the Gospel, was arrayed more beautifully than Solomon in all his glory and was as care-free and glad as the day was long. Time slipped by blissfully and unobserved, like the running stream which murmurs and vanishes. But it happened one day that a little bird came one day and paid a visit to the lily, it came again the next day, then remained away for many days before it came back again, which to the lily seemed strange and inexplicable--inexplicable that the bird did not remain in the same place like the tiny flowers, and strange that the bird could be so capricious. But as it often happened, so it happened to the  lily, that just for this reason it fell more and more in love with the bird because it was so capricious.

This little bird was a naughty bird. Instead of putting itself in the lily's place, instead of rejoicing in its loveliness and rejoicing in its innocent blissfulness, the bird wanted to give itself an air of importance by feeling its freedom and letting the lily feel its bondage. And not only this, but the little bird was at the same time chatty and reported all sorts of things, true and untrue, about other places where lilies far more splendid were found in great abundance, where there was an atmosphere of peace and gaiety, a fragrance, a splendour of colour, a chorus of birds, surpassing all description. So the bird reported, and every one of its reports ended with the remark, deeply humiliating to the lily, that in comparison with such glory it looked like nothing at all, indeed that it was so insignificant that it was questionable what right it had to be called a lily. 

Then the lily became troubled. The more it heard the bird say, the more troubled it became. It no longer slept quietly by night, nor awakened with gladness in the morning. It felt itself bound and imprisoned, it found the murmur of the stream tiresome and the day long. It began now to be concerned with itself and the conditions of its life, in self-commiseration--so long were the days.

"It may be all well," it said to itself, "to hear the brook murmur now and then by way of variety--but to hear the same thing eternally day in and day out is too tiresome." "It might be agreeable enough,"
it said to itself "to be once in a secluded place and alone, but to be forgotten in this way a whole life long, to be without any other society but the society of stinging-nettles, which surely are not proper society
for a lily--it is not to be endured.: "And then to make so poor an appearance as I do, "said the lily to itself, "to be so insignificant as the little bird says I am--Oh, why did I not come into being under other conditions? Oh, why did I not become a crown imperial?"

For the little bird had related to it that among all lilies the crown imperial was regarded as the most beautiful and was the envy of all other lilies. The lily noticed t hat unfortunately its trouble was increasing, but then it talked to itself reasonable--alas, not so reasonably as to banish trouble from its mind, but in such a way as to persuade itself that its trouble was reasonable. "For,"it said, " my wish is surely not an unreasonable wish, I do not require to be something I am not, like a bird, for example; my wish is merely to be a splendid lily, or, I might say, even the most splendid."

All this time the little bird flew back and forth, and with every visit it made, and with every intervening absence, the lily's restlessness increased. At last it confided itself entirely to the bird. One evening they agreed that a change should be brought about next morning, and an end be put to its distress.

Early the next morning came the little bird with its beak it cut the soil away from the lily's root so that it might be free. When this had been accomplished the bird took the lily under its wing and flew away. The plan was for the bird to fly off with the lily to the place where the splendid lilies bloomed, there to help it to get planted, to see if with the change of place and the new environment the lily might not succeed in becoming a splendid lily in company with the many, or perhaps even a crown imperial envied by all the others.

Alas, on the way the lily withered. If the troubled Lily had been content with being a lily, then it would not have become troubled; if it had not become troubled, then it would have remained where
it stood--where it stood in all its loveliness' if it had stayed there, it would have been the very lily the parson talked about on Sunday when he repeated the words of the Gospel: "Consider the lilies, I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these...."

The lily is man. The naughty little bird is the restless thought of comparison which roves far and wide, unstable and capricious, and culls unwholesome knowledge about invidious differences.
The little bird is the poet, the seducer, or the poetical and the seductive in man. The poetical is like the bird's discourse, true and untrue, poesy and truth. For it is true that differences exist and that a great deal may be said about them....In the distress of comparison the troubled person may go at last so far that in view of the difference he forgets that he is a man, so that in despair he conceives himself so different from other men that he even conceives he is different from what is meant by being a man, just as the lily was too inconspicuous that it was questionable if it was really a lily."