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One day the great wind came out of the north. Hurry-scurry! back to their warm homes in the earth and under the old stone wall scampered the crickets and bumblebees to go to sleep. Whirr, whirr! Oh, but how piercing the great wind was; how different from his amiable brother who had travelled all the way from the Southern sea to kiss the flowers and woo the rose!

“Well, this is the last of us!” exclaimed the thistle; “we’re going to die, and that’s the end of it all!”

“No, no,” cried the old oak-tree; “we shall not die; we are going to sleep. Here, take my leaves, little flowers, and you shall sleep warm under them. Then, when you awaken, you shall see how much sweeter and happier the new life is.”

The little ones were very weary indeed. The promised sleep came very gratefully.

“We would not be so willing to go to sleep if we thought we should not awaken,” said the violet.

So the little ones went to sleep. The little vine was the last of all to sink to her slumbers; she nodded in the wind and tried to keep awake till she saw the old oak-tree close his eyes, but her efforts were vain; she nodded and nodded, and bowed her slender form against the old stone wall, till finally she, too, had sunk into repose. And then the old oak-tree stretched his weary limbs and gave a last look at the sullen sky and at the slumbering little ones at his feet; and with that, the old oak-tree fell asleep too.

The child saw all these things, and he wanted to ask his grandsire about them, but his grandsire would not tell him of them; perhaps his grandsire did not know.

The child saw the storm-king come down from the hills and ride furiously over the meadows and over the forest and over the town. The snow fell everywhere, and the north wind played solemn music in the chimneys. The storm-king put the brook to bed, and threw a great mantle of snow over him; and the brook that had romped and prattled all the summer and told pretty tales to the grass and flowers,–the brook went to sleep too. With all his fierceness and bluster, the storm-king was very kind; he did not awaken the old oak-tree and the slumbering flowers. The little vine lay under the fleecy snow against the old stone wall and slept peacefully, and so did the violet and the daisy. Only the wicked old thistle thrashed about in his sleep as if he dreamed bad dreams, which, all will allow, was no more than he deserved.

All through that winter–and it seemed very long–the child thought of the flowers and the vine and the old oak-tree, and wondered whether in the springtime they would awaken from their sleep; and he wished for the springtime to come. And at last the springtime came. One day the sunbeams fluttered down from the sky and danced all over the meadow.

“Wake up, little friends!” cried the sunbeams,–“wake up, for it is the springtime!”

The brook was the first to respond. So eager, so fresh, so exuberant was he after his long winter sleep, that he leaped from his bed and frolicked all over the meadow and played all sorts of curious antics. Then a little bluebird was seen in the hedge one morning. He was calling to the violet.

“Wake up, little violet,” called the bluebird. “Have I come all this distance to find you sleeping? Wake up; it is the springtime!”

That pretty little voice awakened the violet, of course.

“Oh, how sweetly I have slept!” cried the violet; “how happy this new life is! Welcome, dear friends!”

And presently the daisy awakened, fresh and beautiful, and then the little vine, and, last of all, the old oak-tree. The meadow was green, and all around there were the music, the fragrance, the new, sweet life of the springtime.

“I slept horribly,” growled the thistle. “I had bad dreams. It was sleep, after all, but it ought to have been death.”

The thistle never complained again; for just then a four-footed monster stalked through the meadow and plucked and ate the thistle and then stalked gloomily away; which was the last of the sceptical thistle,–truly a most miserable end!

“You said the truth, dear old oak-tree!” cried the little vine. “It was not death,–it was only a sleep, a sweet, refreshing sleep, and this awakening is very beautiful.”

They all said so,–the daisy, the violet, the oak-tree, the crickets, the bees, and all the things and creatures of the field and forest that had awakened from their long sleep to swell the beauty and the glory of the springtime. And they talked with the child, and the child heard them. And although the grandsire never spoke to the child about these things, the child learned from the flowers and trees a lesson of the springtime which perhaps the grandsire never knew.

1885