thee among the clouds, and to hear the solemn voices thou didst hear. Thou
wouldst have loved me better then?"

But the old oak-tree said: "Nay, nay, my beloved; I love thee better as
thou art, for with thy beauty and thy love thou comfortest mine age."

Then would the ivy tell quaint stories to the old and broken
oak-tree,--stories she had learned from the crickets, the bees, the
butterflies, and the mice when she was an humble little vine and played at
the foot of the majestic oak-tree towering in the green-wood with no
thought of the tiny shoot that crept toward him with her love. And these
simple tales pleased the old and riven oak-tree; they were not as heroic
as the tales the winds, the clouds, and the stars told, but they were far
sweeter, for they were tales of contentment, of humility, of love.

So the old age of the oak-tree was grander than his youth.

And all who went through the greenwood paused to behold and admire the
beauty of the oak-tree then; for about his seared and broken trunk the
gentle vine had so entwined her graceful tendrils and spread her fair
foliage, that one saw not the havoc of the years nor the ruin of the
tempest, but only the glory of the oak-tree's age, which was the ivy's
love and ministering.

1886




+MARGARET: A PEARL+