"Then I will sing," said the heath.
And he sang:
"A goodly song round the moorland goes
When the sun in the east leaps clearer;
And like blood or fire the heather glows
As to autumn the woods draw nearer.
"All day on the moor will the cotton-grass
Weave its white, long bands together;
And softly the snake and the adder pass
Through the stems of the tufted heather.
"On swinging tussock the lapwing leaps,
Lark's note above plover's swelling,
As the crook-backed cotter in silence creeps
From his lonely moorland dwelling."
4
Gradually, as the years passed, things looked worse and worse for the wood. The heath spread farther and farther, until it reached the other end of the wood. The great trees died and toppled down as soon as the storm took a fair hold of them: then they lay and rotted and the heather grew over them. There were now only half a score of the oldest and strongest trees left; but they were altogether hollow and had quite thin tops.
"My time is over, I must die," said the wood.
"Well, I told you so beforehand," replied the heath.
But then the men and women began to grow very frightened at the way the heather was using the wood:
"Where am I to get timber for my workshop?" cried the joiner.