Chapter 1 : 
The Willow
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18881888

People :
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Author : Leo Tolstoy

Translator : Nathan Haskell Dole

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One Easter a peasant went to see whether the frost 
was out of the ground. 
He went to his vegetable garden and poked into the 
ground with a stake. The soil was soft. 
The peasant went into the forest. In the woods the 
catkins on a young willow were already beginning to 
swell. And the peasant said to himself : 
" Let me plant young willows around my garden ; they 
will grow and make a hedge." 
He took his ax, cut down a dozen young sprouts, 
trimmed down the butts into points, and planted them 
in the ground. 
All the willow sticks put forth sprouts and green 
foliage above ; and below, underground, they sent out 
similar sprouts in place of roots, and some of them took 
hold of the earth and strengthened themselves ; but 
others did not take hold of the earth with their roots, 
and these died and toppled over. 
When autumn came, the peasant was delighted with 
his willows ; six of them had taken root. The next 
spring some sheep girdled four of them, and thus only 
two were left. 
The following spring, sheep girdled these also. One 
died away entirely, but the other took new lease of life, 
sent down deeper roots, and became a tree. Every spring 
the bees hummed on in the branches. Oftentimes they 
would swarm there, and the peasants would gather them 
into hives. 
Peasants and their wives often came to lunch and nap under the tree, and their children climbed up its trunk 
and broke off its twigs. 
. The peasant the one who had set out the slip had 
died long ago, and still the willow grew. 
His eldest son twice trimmed off its branches and used 
them for fuel. 
And still the willow grew. They cut the branches all 
round and made a cone of it, and when spring came, it 
still again put forth new branches, though they were 
small, but twice as many as before, like the mane of a 
colt. 
And the eldest son ceased to be master of the house, 
and the village was removed to another place, but still 
the willow grew in the bare field. 
Other peasants came and cut it down, and still it grew. 
The lightning struck the tree ; it sent out fresh branches 
from the sides, and still it grew and bloomed. 
One peasant wanted to cut it down to a block, and 
actually felled it ; but it was badly rotted. The tree fell 
over and held only by one side, but still it kept growing, 
and every year the bees flew to it to gather pollen from 
its flowers. 
Once, early in the spring, the children gathered to- 
gether to tend the horses under the tree. 
They thought that it was rather cold, and they began 
to make a fire, and they collected stubble, mugwort, and 
twigs. One boy climbed the willow and broke off 
branches. They piled all their tinder in the hollow of 
the willow and set it on fire. 
The willow began to hiss ; the sap in its wood boiled, 
the smoke poured forth, and then it began to blaze ; all 
the inside turned black. The young sprouts crumpled 
up ; the blossoms wilted. 
The children drove their horses home. The burned 
willow remained alone in the field. A black crow flew 
up to it, perched on it, and cried : 
" So the old poker is dead ; it was time long ago ! " 



     From : Wikisource.org

Events :
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     Chapter 1 -- Publication : November 30, 1887

     Chapter 1 -- Added : July 01, 2021

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