The Complaining Wheels

THE OXEN AND THE WHEELS

A pair of Oxen were drawing a heavily loaded wagon along a miry country road. They had to use all their strength to pull the wagon, but they did not complain.

The Wheels of the wagon were of a different sort. Though the task they had to do was very light compared with that of the Oxen, they creaked and groaned at every turn. The poor Oxen, pulling with all their might to draw the wagon through the deep mud, had their ears filled with the loud complaining of the Wheels. And this, you may well know, made their work so much the harder to endure.

"Silence!" the Oxen cried at last, out of patience. "What have you Wheels to complain about so loudly? We are drawing all the weight, not you, and we are keeping still about it besides."

They complain most who suffer least.

Blowing Bubbles by William Allingham

See the pretty planet!
       Floating sphere!
 Faintest breeze will fan it
       Far or near;

World as light as feather;
       Moonshine rays,
 Rainbow tints together,
       As it plays.

Drooping, sinking, failing,
       Nigh to earth,
 Mounting, whirling, sailing,
       Full of mirth;

Life there, welling, flowing,
       Waving round;
 Pictures coming, going,
       Without sound.

Quick now, be this airy
       Globe repelled!
 Never can the fairy
       Star be held.

Touched, it in a twinkle
       Disappears!
 Leaving but a sprinkle,
       As of tears.

10 My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
 And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
 He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
 And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
 Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
 For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
 And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
 And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
 He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
 I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
 I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
 But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
 Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.