The Dryad Page #7

"The Dryad" is an intricate tale by Danish fairy tale legend, Hans Christian Andersen. The storyline follows a Dryad - a mythological tree spirit - who impatiently longs to explore beyond her solitary existence in a grand ancient tree. Lured by the festive glamour of the Paris exhibition, she abandons her roots only to find the bustling, industrialized city overwhelming and herself feeling lost and homesick. In this narrative, Andersen explores themes of nature, industrialization, alienation, and longing.

• Children

								

the dust over the land and through the air. All is dust!"

The Dryad felt a terror like a woman who has cut asunder her
pulse-artery in the bath, but is filled again with the love of life,
even while she is bleeding to death. She raised herself, tottered
forward a few steps, and sank down again at the entrance to a little
church. The gate stood open, lights were burning upon the altar, and
the organ sounded.

What music! Such notes the Dryad had never yet heard; and yet it
seemed to her as if she recognized a number of well-known voices among
them. They came deep from the heart of all creation. She thought she
heard the stories of the old clergyman, of great deeds, and of the
celebrated names, and of the gifts that the creatures of God must
bestow upon posterity, if they would live on in the world.

The tones of the organ swelled, and in their song there sounded
these words:

"Thy wishing and thy longing have torn thee, with thy roots,
from the place which God appointed for thee. That was thy destruction,
thou poor Dryad!"

The notes became soft and gentle, and seemed to die away in a
wail.

In the sky the clouds showed themselves with a ruddy gleam. The
Wind sighed:

"Pass away, ye dead! now the sun is going to rise!"

The first ray fell on the Dryad. Her form was irradiated in
changing colors, like the soap-bubble when it is bursting and
becomes a drop of water; like a tear that falls and passes away like a
vapor.

Poor Dryad! Only a dew-drop, only a tear, poured upon the earth,
and vanished away!
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