The little servant obeyed the queen's order, and thus the Woodstream had its source. So you see the forest has likewise its tear--like that of man. So likewise do I spring from the heart--the hidden heart of the forest. When Sorrow, Desire, or Pain knock at it, then the tear streams forth. In the summer, when so many children of the forest are destroyed and annihilated, I flow gently, but unceasingly. In the autumn, when every thing says farewell, I weep in silent sorrow over the blossoms and leaves which fall in my way, that they also may be entombed with regret. In the wild solitude of winter I am benumbed, and the tear becomes a pearl, like the closed grief of the ocean. Thus I hang with faint lustre on stones and roots, which look like weeping eyes. In the spring, when desire rises in every heart, then the tear of the forest flows in pensive joy. I overflow the borders of my course, greeting flowers and grass as far as I can. Often pity moves me; for when the clouds weep rain or the flowers dew, the Woodstream swells. Do you not perceive by the breath of feeling and melancholy which is exhaled from me, that I spring from the heart of the forest. The heaving rush presses itself nearer and nearer to me. Where I flow the sensitive forget-me-not more especially flourishes; it glances at me, as you have seen blue eyes at the hour of parting. The weeping willow hangs her branches down to my eternally murmuring waves. Every where, I excite feeling; even the stone which stops my course--the unchangeable stone, over which time passes unmarked--weeps over me transparent tears, and my kisses are the only things to which it does not oppose itself. Now Puck, the wag, is envious of the Woodstream, whom he would surpass with his trash, but sees him, nevertheless, maintain continued importance; and often oddly puts a knotted root or pointed branch in my way, that my drops may spring up and be disturbed. You will then see in the sunbeams gay colors play around me, like those of the rainbow: that is Puck's trumpery, which he hangs about my lustre as if he would say, "Are not my gifts beautiful?" But soon they are gone, and I flow unchangeably: so often is the mirthful and ludicrous linked with sorrow and melancholy, as if contrived by the spirit of contradiction. Even the heart of man, when breaking beneath a load of sorrow, bursts forth into ludicrous sallies--a laugh is seen on the weeping face: in the midst of Nature's profoundest harmony a vacant distortion meets us; on the richest carpets of lawn a knotted root or faded dry branch stretches itself; between healthy, full-blown roses you will find a mis-shapen sister obtruding her weird face. Puck causes all this. It is a deep mind that can see how Nature makes all these incongruities to end in harmony.