"
May is fond of repeating a verse, which I daresay you know, about a little
girl who, when it was too dark for her to see any more, folded up her work
and put away her playthings with a "good-night, good-night" to them; for
the time for working and playing had come to an end. "But," the verse goes
on--
"She did not say to the sun 'good-night,'
Though she saw him set like a ball of light;
For she knew he had God's time to keep
All over the world, while others sleep."
Yes; this wonderful "ball of light"--so bright that the brightest light
we know of looks dull when held up before its dazzling face--is ever,
night and day, sending out rays of light and heat, like streams from an
overflowing fountain, always making daylight somewhere. When you lie down
in your bed, and settle yourself to sleep sound till morning, your little
cousins in Australia and New Zealand are just beginning to sit up in
theirs, and to rub their eyes, and think it will soon be breakfast time;
and in the evening, when their day is done, yours will be just beginning
again.
If there were any part of the world upon which the sun never shone, how
cold and dark and desolate that forsaken spot would be! If no waves of heat
warmed the earth, not a seed could spring up; no plant could live, no tree
bear fruit, no flower lift up its head to the kindly light and show its
fair colours; for do you not remember we learnt that the colours of flowers
all come from the sunlight? Without the sun, the green earth would be
changed into a frozen desert, with nothing living or moving upon it.
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