THE DREAM OF THE OAK TREE
There stood in a wood, high on the bank near the open sea-shore, such a grand old oak tree! It was three hundred and sixty-five years old; but all this length of years had seemed to the tree scarcely more than so many days appear to us men and women, boys and girls.
A tree's life is not quite the same as a man's: we wake during the day, and sleep and dream during the night; but a tree wakes throughout three seasons of the year, and has no sleep till winter comes. The winter is its sleeping time—its night after the long day which we call spring, summer, and autumn.
It was just at the holy Christmas-tide that the oak tree dreamed his most beautiful dream. He seemed to hear the church-bells ringing all around, and to feel as if it were a mild, warm summer day. Fresh and green he reared his mighty crown on high, and the sunbeams played among his leaves. As in a festive procession, all that the tree had beheld in his life now passed by.
Knights and ladies, with feathers in their caps and hawks perching on their wrists, rode gaily through the wood; dogs barked, and the huntsman sounded his bugle.
Then came foreign soldiers in bright armour and gay vestments, bearing spurs and halberds, setting up their tents, and presently taking them down again. Then watch-fires blazed up and bands of wild outlaws sang, revelled, and slept under the tree's outstretched boughs; or happy lovers met in quiet moonlight and carved their initials on the grayish bark.
At one time a guitar and an Æolian harp had been hung among the old oak's boughs by merry travelling apprentices; now they hung there again, and the wind played sweetly with their strings.
And now the dream changed. A new and stronger current of life flowed through him, down to his lowest roots, up to his highest twigs, even to the very leaves. The tree felt in his roots that a warm life stirred in the earth, and that he was growing taller and taller; his trunk shot up more and more, his crown grew fuller; and still he soared and spread. He felt that his power grew, too, and he longed to advance higher and higher to the warm, bright sun.
Already he towered above the clouds, which drifted below him, now like a troop of dark-plumaged birds of passage, now like flocks of large, white swans. The stars became visible by daylight, so large and bright, each one sparkling like a mild, clear eye.