A FLOWER-RACE TO THE SUN 33 
But if you had wings like the Birds of Paradise, 
and could fly over the tops of the trees that make 
the forest, and look down into a leafy meadow 
instead of up into a leafy sky, then you would 
see the most gloriously beautiful flowers growing 
in that meadow, just as the daisies and butter- 
cups grow in the meadows that you run over, 
here. For flowers love the light of the sun, and 
they struggle up into it through the leaves that 
keep it out. To them the leaves are not as the 
sky, but as the clouds that shut the sky out, and as 
they are clouds that will never roll away (even 
though they may fall sometimes in a rain of leaves), 
the only thing for them to do is to climb up to 
them and pierce them, and see the sky, with the 
sun shining in it, on the other side. So whilst a 
few flowers stay in the shade below, most of them 
grow and struggle up into the light and air above, 
and they are all in such a hurry to get there that 
every One tries to grow faster than all the others. 
Ah! what a race it is, a race to reach the sun. 
You have heard of all sorts of races, and some, 
perhaps, you have seen; running-races, races in sacks, 
boat-races, horse-races (though those, I hope, you 
never have and never will see), but you never either 
saw or heard of a fairer, lovelier, more delicate 
race than a race of flowers to reach the sun. Think 
Cc 
