Ways close when need is sorest:
Land-birds, fly clear!
Plunge, frogs, in mere!
Bee, lock your lair!
Take shelter, bear!
Fall, last leaf in the forest!
And then it was over.
It all went at such a rate that one could hardly tell how it began or how it ended.
The birds flew from the land in flocks. The starling and the lapwing, the thrush and the blackbird all migrated to the South. Every night, the sparrow heard their chirping and the fluttering of their wings in the air.
Every morning, before the sun rose, the wind tore through the forest and pulled the last leaves off the trees. Every day, the wind blew stronger, snapped great branches, swept the withered leaves together into heaps, scattered them again and, at last, laid them like a soft, thick carpet over the whole floor of the forest. Here and there, a single leaf hung on a twig and resisted and refused to die. But this was only a short respite, for, if it did not fall to-day, it fell to-morrow.