With its many leaves the moonbeams,
And the starlight dies in heaven.
Sad the lives of man and hero,
Sad the house of ocean-dwellers,
If the sun shines not upon them,
If the moonlight does not cheer them.
At the prayer of Wainamoinen, appalled by the monstrous growth, his mother, the wind-spirit, sends a tiny water-creature, who, soon turning into a giant, with a mighty swing of his hatchet strikes the tree. With the second stroke he cuts it, and with the third fire springs from its huge bulk and the oak yields, “shaking earth and heaven in falling.” It is not till then that its beneficent powers are made manifest:—
Eastward far the trunk extending,
Far to westward flew the tree-tops,
To the south the leaves were scattered,