Page:Fairy tales and other stories (Andersen, Craigie).djvu/422

 410 '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 woodruff 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 lived and remained till now, then 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 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 best of 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, all!'

That was the dream of the old Oak Tree; and while he dreamed thus a mighty storm came rushing over land and sea—at the holy Christmastide. The sea rolled great billows towards the shore, and there was a cracking and crashing in the tree—his root was torn out of the ground in the very moment while he was dreaming that his root freed itself from the earth. He fell. His three hundred and sixty-five years were now as the single day of the Ephemera.

On the morning of the Christmas festival, when the sun rose, the storm had subsided. From all the churches sounded the festive bells, and from every hearth, even from the smallest hut, arose the smoke in blue clouds, like the smoke from the altars of the Druids of old at the feast