1872FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSENTHE LAST DREAM OF THE OLD OAKby Hans Christian AndersenIN the forest, high up on the steep shore, and not far from theopen seacoast, stood a very old oak-tree. It was just three hundredand sixty-five years old, but that long time was to the tree as thesame 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 isobliged to keep awake through three seasons of the year, and doesnot get any sleep till winter comes. Winter is its time for rest;its night after the long day of spring, summer, and autumn. On manya warm summer, the Ephemera, the flies that exist for only 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 largefresh leaves, the tree would always say, Poor little creature! yourwhole life consists only of a single day. How very short. It must bequite melancholy.Melancholy! what do you mean? the little creature would alwaysreply. Everything around me is so wonderfully bright and warm, andbeautiful, that it makes me joyous. But only for one day, and then it is all over.Over! repeated the fly; what is the meaning of all over? Areyou all over too?No; I shall very likely live for thousands of your days, and myday is whole seasons long; indeed it is so long that you could neverreckon it out.No? then I dont understand you. You may have thousands of mydays, but I have thousands of moments in which I can be merry andhappy. Does all the beauty of the world cease when you die?No, replied the tree; it will certainly last much longer,-infinitely longer than I can even think of. Well, then, said thelittle fly, we have the same time to live; only we reckondifferently. And the little creature danced and floated in the air,rejoicing in her delicate wings of gauze and velvet, rejoicing inthe balmy breezes, laden with the fragrance of clover-fields andwild roses, elder-blossoms and honeysuckle, from the garden hedges,wild thyme, primroses, and mint, and the scent of all these was sostrong that the perfume almost intoxicated the little fly. The longand beautiful day had been so full of joy and sweet delights, thatwhen the sun sank low it felt tired of all its happiness andenjoyment. Its wings could sustain it no longer, and gently and slowlyit glided down upon the soft waving blades of grass, nodded its littlehead as well as it could nod, and slept peacefully and sweetly. Thefly was dead.Poor little Ephemera! said the oak; what a terribly shortlife! And so, on every summer day the dance was repeated, the samequestions asked, and the same answers given. The same thing wascontinued through many generations of Ephemera; all of them feltequally merry and equally happy.The oak remained awake through the morning of spring, the noonof summer, and the evening of autumn; its time of rest, its night drewnigh- winter was coming. Already the storms were singing, Good-night,good-night. Here fell a leaf and there fell a leaf. We will rock youand lull you. Go to sleep, go to sleep. We will sing you to sleep, andshake you to sleep, and it will do your old twigs good; they will evencrackle with pleasure. Sleep sweetly, sleep sweetly, it is yourthree-hundred-and-sixty-fifth night. Correctly speaking, you are but ayoungster in the world. Sleep sweetly, the clouds will drop snowupon you, which will be quite a cover-lid, warm and sheltering to yourfeet. Sweet sleep to you, and pleasant dreams. And there stood theoak, stripped of all its leaves, left to rest during the whole of along winter, and to dream many dreams of events that had happened inits life, as in the dreams of men. The great tree had once been small;indeed, in its cradle it had been an acorn. According to humancomputation, it was now in the fourth century of its existence. It wasthe largest and best tree in the forest. Its summit towered aboveall the other trees, and could be seen far out at sea, so that itserved as a landmark to the sailors. It had no idea how many eyeslooked eagerly for it. In its topmost branches the wood-pigeon builther nest, and the cuckoo carried out his usual vocal performances, andhis well-known notes echoed amid the boughs; and in autumn, when theleaves looked like beaten copper plates, the birds of passage wouldcome and rest upon the branches before taking their flight acrossthe sea. But now it was winter, the tree stood leafless, so that everyone could see how crooked and bent were the branches that sprang forthfrom the trunk. Crows and rooks came by turns and sat on them, andtalked of the hard times which were beginning, and how difficult itwas in winter to obtain food.It was just about holy Christmas time that the tree dreamed adream. The tree had, doubtless, a kind of feeling that the festivetime had arrived, and in his dream fancied he heard the bellsringing from a