ed. He saw hostile warriors in coloured jerkins and with
shining weapons, with spear and halbert, pitching their tents and
striking them again. The watch-fires flamed up anew, and men sang and
slept under the branches of the tree. He saw loving couples meeting
near his trunk, happily, in the moonshine; and they cut the initials
of their names in the grey-green bark of his stem. Once--but long
years had rolled by since then--citherns and AEolian harps had been
hung up on his boughs by merry wanderers, now they hung there again,
and once again they sounded in tones of marvellous sweetness. The
wood-pigeons cooed, as if they were telling what the tree felt in all
this, and the cuckoo called out to tell him how many summer days he
had yet to live.

Then it appeared to him as if new life were rippling down into the
remotest fibre of his root, and mounting up into his highest branches,
to the tops of the leaves. The tree felt that he was stretching and
spreading himself, and through his root he felt that there was life
and motion even in the ground itself. He felt his strength increase,
he grew higher, his stem shot up unceasingly, and he grew more and
more, his crown became fuller, and spread out; and in proportion as
the tree grew, he felt his happiness increase, and his joyous hope
that he should reach even higher--quite up to the warm brilliant sun.

[Illustration: THE LOVERS AT THE OLD OAK TREE.]

Already had he grown high above the clouds, which floated past beneath
his crown like dark troops of passage-birds, or like great white
swans. And every leaf of the tree had the gift of sight, as if it had
eyes wherewith to see; the stars became visible in broad daylight,
great and sparkling; each of them sparkled like a pair of eyes, mild
and clear. They recalled to his memory well-known gentle eyes, eyes of
children, eyes of lovers who had met beneath his boughs.

It was a marvellous spectacle, and one full of happiness and joy! And
yet amid all this happiness the tree felt a longing, a yearning desire
that all other trees of the wood beneath him, and all the bushes, and
herbs, and flowers, might be able to rise with him, that they too
might see this splendour, and experience this joy. The great majestic
oak was not quite happy in his happiness, while he had not them all,
great and little, about him; and this feeling of yearning trembled
through his every twig, through his every leaf, warmly and fervently
as through a hum