Krilof and His Fables/The Tree

"Dear friend," cried a young Sapling to a peasant,—whom it saw carrying an axe, "please clear away the forest around me. I cannot grow comfortably, nor can I see the light of the sun; my roots have not space enough, and the breezes are not at liberty to sport around me; such arches has it thought fit to weave above me. If it were not for its impeding my growth I should become the ornament of the neighbourhood in a year, and all the valley would be covered by my shade. But as it is I am thin and frail, al­ most like a withered branch."

The peasant took to his axe and rendered service to the Tree as to a friend. Around the sapling a great space was cleared, but not long did its triumph last! At one time it was parched by the sun, at another it was knocked about by hail or rain, and at last it was snapped in two by the wind.

"Fool!" then said to it a Snake, "have you not brought your misfortune upon yourself? If you had grown up, hidden by the forest, neither heat nor storm would have been able to hurt you. The old trees would have protected you; and if a time had come when their season was past and they ​disappeared, then you, in your turn, would have so flourished, would have become so strongly built and firmly rooted, that your present misfortune would never have happened to you,

and you would, perhaps, have been able to encounter even the hurricane.