The Story of the Glittering Plain

After Hallblithe had been housed a little while, and the time was again drawing nigh to the twelfth moon since he had come to the Glittering Plain, he went in the wood one day; and, pondering many things without fixing on any one, he stood before a very great oak-tree and looked at the tall straight bole thereof, and there came into his head the words of an old song which was written round a scroll of the carving over the shut- bed, wherein he was wont to lie when he was at home in the House of the Raven: and thus it said:

I am the oak-tree, and forsooth / Men deal by me with little ruth; / My boughs they shred, my life they slay, / And speed me o'er the watery way.