But, every time that Summer spoke, there was a new one that wailed:
“There are too few worms!” cried the siskin, who now had four youngsters in the nest and was wearing himself to a skeleton in the effort to provide food for them. “We are starving. We can never hold out!”
“There are too many birds!” whined the worm in the mould. “If one but stirs out for a moment, one is eaten up.”
“Deliver us from the stork!” prayed the frogs.
“Provide more frogs,” cried the stork, “or I shall have to go elsewhere!”
And the beech complained because the cockchafer ate its leaves; and the crows could never get cockchafers enough. The bees whined about the flowers, as the flowers had done about the bees: they considered that it was much too hard to get hold of the honey. The hare ran away from the fox and fell into the talons of the eagle. The young ash in the hedge raised his voice to heaven against the honeysuckle that twined itself right up to his top.
But the Prince of Summer stood tall and straight and radiant and surveyed his kingdom. His smile was wide and bright and there was no pity in his hard eyes. He raised his hand, as though to bid them be silent, but none heeded him; and the noise increased hourly and the land was full of cries and lamentations.
Then he knitted his brows and called the thick black clouds from behind the hills. They came at his beck; fear lay over the valley again; and the cries were silenced. The thunder rolled till the mountains shook, the lightning flamed, the rain poured.
And Summer’s great voice sounded through the air:
“Know you not that I am a lord as stern as Winter, whom you hate? He reigns over death, as I do over life. I will be obeyed, like him; like him, I crush whatever resists me. You thought I was a minstrel like Spring, who sang you to life and longing and went off over the mountains. But I am greater than Spring. For I satisfied your desires with food and made you subject to the law of life. But the law is this, that that which is hale shall stand, but that which is sick shall fall. Therefore I made my days long, that you should become green and grow. Therefore I gave you strength and power in a thousand ways, the smallest gnat as well as the tallest tree in the forest, so that you should fight and grow up. Therefore I gave you children, so that you should never perish. And whoso obeys my law and well employs the day, upon him the sunlight of my eyes shall fall. His strength shall reign, his children shall bear his name throughout the ages. But whoso flinches, he shall die.”