an heart.

The crown of the tree waved to and fro, as if he sought something in
his silent longing, and he looked down. Then he felt the fragrance of
thyme, and soon afterwards the more powerful scent of honeysuckle and
violets; and he fancied he heard the cuckoo answering him.

Yes, through the clouds the green summits of the forest came peering
up, and under himself the Oak saw the other trees, as they grew and
raised themselves aloft. Bushes and herbs shot up high, and some tore
themselves up bodily by the roots to rise the quicker. The birch was
the quickest of all. Like a white streak of lightning, its slender
stem shot upwards in a zigzag line, and the branches spread around it
like green gauze and like banners; the whole woodland natives, even to
the brown plumed rushes, grew up with the rest, and the birds came
too, and sang; and on the grass blade that fluttered aloft like a long
silken ribbon into the air, sat the grasshopper cleaning his wings
with his leg; the May beetles hummed, and the bees murmured, and every
bird sang in his appointed manner; all was song and sound of gladness
up into the high heaven.

"But the little blue flower by the water-side, where is that?" said
the Oak; "and the purple bell-flower and the daisy?" for, you see, the
old Oak Tree wanted to have them all about him.

"We are here--we are here!" was shouted and sung in reply.

"But the beautiful thyme of last summer--and in the last year there
was certainly a place here covered with lilies of the valley! and the
wild apple tree that blossomed so splendidly! and all the glory of the
wood that came year by year--if that had only just been born, it might
have been here now!"

"We are here, we are here!" replied voices still higher in the air. It
seemed as if they had flown on before.

"Why, that is beautiful, indescribably beautiful!" exclaimed the old
Oak Tree, rejoicingly. "I have them all around me, great and small;
not one has been forgotten! How can so much happiness be imagined? How
can it be possible?"

"In heaven, in the better land, it can be imagined, and it is
possible!" the reply sounded through the air.

And the old tree, who grew on and on, felt how his roots were tearing
themselves free from the ground.

"That's right, that's better than all!" said the tree. "Now no fetters
hold me! I can fly up now, to the very highest, in glory and in light!
And all my beloved ones are with me, great and small--all of them,
a