The Prince of Summer was silent and the thunder rolled away slowly over the mountains. The clouds parted and vanished; it became night. The stars shone bright and friendly, the trees dripped and all was still.
But, next morning, the valley awoke to fiercer fighting and louder cries than ever.
For there was not a bird in the forest nor a flower in the meadow but had heard what the Prince of Summer said and understood it. They all knew what it meant and armed themselves, before sunrise, for the fight for life.
The siskin and his wife hunted twice as eagerly in the thicket; the little brown mice dug twice as diligently; the flowers redoubled their radiance and their fragrance. Goody Mole rummaged the ground in every direction; the stag found a meadow where the grass stood high and green. The beech put forth new twigs in the place of those which the cockchafers had eaten; and the ash stretched its bows right through the honeysuckle to show Summer that it was alive.
Thousands died, but none heard their death-moan, because of the din that arose from the fight of the living. And it was as though more lives came for each life that was extinguished.
The siskin’s youngsters hopped out of the nest and fell from the branch and fluttered up again. The crow’s children screamed in the tree-tops; the young eagles flew from the rock to try their wings. The starling drove her first brood from the nest and laid new eggs; the frog lived to see her degenerate young grow quite respectable before she herself was swallowed by the stork.
Never had the fish swarmed so thickly in the river, never had the beech’s leaves been so broad, never had the copsewood been so dense, never had the flowers pressed so close together in the hedge.
And the Prince of Summer stood amidst his kingdom taller and straighter and more radiant than ever:
“It is well!” he said.
Then evening came. The crows flew home from their debating-club in the old, dead oak; the little birds in the thicket sang their evensong in chorus, but made it short, for they were very tired. The flowers shut their petals; the bees closed the door of their hive. The moth flew out on her soft, grey wings. The stars peeped out, ever more and ever larger.