In springtime, when the fields of wheat are green, the larks there build their nests; in springtime, all creation is alive with growth, alight with lust: the sea-beasts deep beneath the waves, the tigers in the murky jungles, and, in verdant fields, the birds—all taste the joys of vernal love.
One lark, though, had let half the spring pass by before becoming, like Nature, a mother. Finally she built her nest, laid eggs, and incubated them until, without a hitch, they hatched.
Before the brood was fully fledged, the wheat matured. The worried mother warned her little larks to be on guard.
“The owner of this field will come around soon; listen carefully, if I’m out foraging, to what he says. Our lives depend on it!”
And sure enough, as soon as she was gone, the owner and his son appeared. “This crop needs harvesting,” he said. “Go ask our friends to lend a hand first thing tomorrow morning.”
When the lark returned, she found her birdlings much alarmed.
“He said,” reported one, “he’d fetch his friends to help at dawn . . . !”
“If that is all he said,” the lark replied, “we needn’t leave our nest.”
Well-fed and reassured, the birds all slept. Then morning came—but not one friend arrived.
The owner, on his rounds again, said, “Why’s this wheat still standing? We’ve been wronged; but we were wrong to think we could rely on friends to do our work. —Go call our relatives, and tell them, son, to bring their sickles when they come.”
The lark, returning later, found the brood in consternation.
“Relatives!” they chirped and tirra-lirraed fretfully. “He said he’d get his relatives . . . !”
The lark said, “No; don’t worry; go to sleep. We need not fret just yet.”
And she was right: there came no relatives to reap.
The owner and his son surveyed once more the uncut field. “I see that we’ve been fools,” the owner said, “to wait for others to assist us. You’re your own best friend and relative, my boy. Remember that. —Tomorrow, we alone, our little family, will mow this wheat ourselves.”
These words repeated to the lark, she cried, “We mustn’t linger one more day, my dears!”
Without delay, away they flew.
You cannot count on anyone but you.