Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/139



the forest, high up on the steep shore, and not far from the open sea-coast, stood a very old oak tree. It was just three hundred and sixty-five years old, but that long time was to the tree as the same number of days might be to us; we wake by day and sleep by night, and then we have our dreams. It is different with the tree; it is obliged to keep awake through three seasons of the year, and does not get any sleep till winter comes. Winter is its time for rest; its night after the long day of spring, summer, and autumn. On many a warm summer, the Ephemera, the flies that exist only for a day, had fluttered about the old oak, enjoyed life and felt happy; and if, for a moment, one of the tiny creatures rested on one of his large fresh leaves, the tree would always say, “Poor little creature! your whole life consists only of a single day. How very short. It must be quite melancholy.”

“Melancholy! what do you mean?” the little creature would always reply. “Everything around me is so wonderfully bright, and warm, and beautiful, that it makes me joyous.”