9/8/15, 8:32 PM
The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays
Page 6 of 253
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1203811h.html#ch-02
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the
ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the
lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering
from side to side of his square of the window-pane.
One could not help watching him. One was, indeed,
conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The
possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so
enormous and so various that to have only a moth's
part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a
hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre
opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew
vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and,
after waiting there a second, flew across to the
other. What remained for him but to fly to a third
corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could
do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the
sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic
voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What
he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a
fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of
the world had been thrust into his frail and
diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I
could fancy that a thread of vital light became
visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form
of the energy that was rolling in at the open window
and driving its way through so many narrow and
intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of
other
human
beings,
there
was
something
marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as
if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and
decking it as lightly as possible with down and
feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show
