In a forest clearing, there stood a magnificent oak tree named Oscar. It was spring, and all the other trees in the forest were lively with budding leaves and chirping birds. While they shook hands with the soft spring winds, Oscar quietly observed his surroundings. Although he grew strong and tall, he felt lonely as the other trees played and laughed together.
“Good morning, dear trees,” said a little birch who lived nearby. “You look so fine today! We were just planning a tree dance, won’t you join us?”
“No, thank you,” sighed Oscar. “I don’t feel like dancing.”
“Oh come! It will do you good!” said a linden. “Come with us, friends; we will wait for you.”
But Oscar shook his head and replied, “I cannot do it,” and still the other trees said nothing but danced.
The gentle rain watered the flowers, and the sunbeams kissed every flower into a brighter hue and polished every leaf like a precious gem. But Oscar stood alone with his head raised high to the sky without a single flower or plant near him.
Then one day, four birds in the life of every tree happened to light softly on one of Oscar’s strong branches. They began talking together, and as Oscar listened to them, he thought, “I do not feel so lonely; the birds at least keep me company.”
Then higher up in his branches sat an old squirrel with his wife and a most playful young squirrel who kept jumping to and fro. Two playful rabbits had also started to shake some acorns from Oscar’s branches so that they could nibble them in comfort at his foot. Near his roots, too, stood a family of hedgehogs and a wild little mouse, which the farmer’s boy was trying in vain to catch.
As evening came, the sun sank gradually behind the tree-tops, the moon began to shine like a lamp in the heavens, and all the lovely little forest sounds became alive. Suddenly it grew dark, and the trees trembled, the birds hurried into their nests, and the boughs of the old trees sighed heavily.
Then came from the clearing a frightful noise, a heaving, rushing, crashing noise, that grew louder and louder as if the biggest mill in the country at once raised its three hundred water-wheels into the air. The air grew really dark, and it seemed as if all the roaring waves of the ocean were trying to sweep away everything in the forest.
Before the hurricane had passed, thousands of big trees were uprooted, the largest oaks split into pieces, the strongest firs torn apart. But Oscar stood firm, and when morning broke, and the clouds fled away before the sun, he looked round on everything crushed and destroyed in the forest, the wreaths of the rivers set in the deep dells, all so dreadfully flattened and disfigured.
But alas, still worse was it in his immediate neighbourhood. Trees and birds that had long lived together lay below him, wilting and gasping for breath, the delicate hedgehogs had thoughtlessly ventured out from their hole and had now got forever a thorn through their chest—everything turned into a slaughter-field, and one great black mourning-veil hung over the forest.
In Oscar’s branches sat a lonely hen who had clung for dear life to the most miserable old bough, and in her hot despair had torn all her feathers. “Oh, how dreadful! How dreadful!” croaked the bird; “when shall I again find a little comfort in life?”
“Never!” said a bird that flew by. “That’s a pestilential box now, and nothing ever grows happier where it has bloomed withered.”
“Above all else, Alida, do not fly to the terrifying old oak,” said an old crow, “for he is quite dead and ready for the funeral-churchyard.”
“Dead!” exclaimed Oscar, whose heart rejoiced, and his good blood streamed through all his boughs and branches. “And the heart still beats, and should everybody be happy about it?”
But Oscar’s branches whispered gently above the crushed ones below him, thought calming words to the sorrowing, and conducted rain and sunshine into every dark nook.
“Faithful friend, comforter, brave osier!” cried the voices of the depths. Then small plants sprang up, grew in strength, and began to blossom in groups and wreaths, and the village at the edge of the forest saw every year more flower-garlands of spring colours round the noble trunk. A great wall was all the same destroyed.
“No,” said the husbandman, “it is as if Nature wanders continually before the door.”
Truly she did wander, and she spoke of things that had never been in the heart of the husbandman to conceive. The birds and animals of the forest built a beautiful chapel higher up in the boughs of Oscar than ever tree-chapel was built by man. The husbandman one fine day walking out into the fields and meadow saw birds and beasts and rich flower-garlands, and never before had he seen anything so beautiful or held anything more holy in his heart or head than the chapel of Oscar.
And the heart of Oscar beat eternally and never fell asleep, while the roots and stems of the trees around him gnawed and rotted.