Dimbovitza! all too deeply
Drank I of thy flowing river;
For my love, my inmost being
There, meseems, have sunk for ever.
Dimbovitza! Dimbovitza!
All my soul hast thou in keeping,
Since beneath thy banks of verdure
Lies my dearest treasure sleeping.”
Shortly before the child had been taken ill, the Princess had suffered much from her eyes, and could now hardly occupy herself at all. It was a great affliction to her to whom work was life! During these sad, dark days she framed the sweet expressions of her child in verses which one cannot read without emotion. The following poem is on the poetical desire of the little Princess to kiss the sunbeams:—
“On the earth, in the shimmer
Of shining sunbeams
Which in golden light gleams
Paint the colours that glimmer,
How often, my child,
In those halcyon days
Hast thou lain, and smiled,
Kissing the rays.
Didst draw them to thee
With thy fingers in sport,
Or came they unsought
Thy playmates to be?
I ne’er could divine,
But methinks at thy birth
Thou wast sent on a sunbeam
To me and the earth.”
And now the sunbeams have kissed the lovely child and taken her away with them. It seems as if all earthly hopes and all earthly joy had been buried with her. A deep sorrow and an unutterable longing stole into the heart of the Princess, which only a mother can really understand, and which can only end with life. On the 25th of April the following poem was found in the Journal—
LONGING.
“I long to feel thy little arm’s embrace,
Thy little silver-sounding voice to hear,
I long for thy warm kisses on my face,
And for thy bird-like carol, blithe and clear.