ORIGINAL.
HOME AT LAST.
They gathered 'round the dying stranger's bed,
They heard his words, yet knew not what he said—
"Oh! take me home!"
With earnest looks they pressed his feverish hand,
And sorely grieved they could not understand—
"Oh! take me home!"
The busy host forgot his clamoring guests.
Wistful to answer this of all requests—
"Oh! take me home!"
The good-wife scanned the stranger's pallid face,
And wept. But to his meaning found no trace;
"Oh! take me home!"
The hostess' fair-haired daughter stood apart,
"What can he mean?" she asked her beating heart;
"Oh! take me home!"
"Whence had he come? His name?" None knew. And yet
He speaks in tones I never can forget—
"Oh! take me home!"
With timid step she softly neared the bed,
And took his hand. The stranger raised his head,
And deeply sighed.
Weeping, she sang a simple, childish rhyme.
He smiled and said: "Jetzt bin ich endlich heim!" [Footnote 61]
And then he died.
[Footnote 61: I am home at last.]
Translated from the
Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires.
THE OLD OWL.
When I was living in my native village, about twenty years ago, I made the acquaintance of an old owl who lived in one of my forests. One of my forests I say, and with good reason; for I was the only being who could appreciate them, although a few landed proprietors in the town were wont to make clearings therein, on the plea of having bought them and paid down certain moneys in the presence of our notary public. Therefore in my forest dwelt my owl, who was a personage of mature years, and had first attracted me by the singular similarity of his tastes and opinions with mine. Our first meeting took place under rather peculiar circumstances. One evening, after belaboring my brains over some enigmatical Persian verses for hours, I left the house, still conning over an enigmatical hemistich; and strolling on until I gained the edge of the forest, plunged in without noticing whither I went. I might have wandered about all night, lost in the mazes of this mysterious satire, had not the sweet odors of a cherry tree in full blossom attracted my attention, penetrating through the olfactory nerves to the inmost recesses of my brain; even to the bump of pedantry itself. This brought me to myself; and astounded to see how far I had wandered at that late hour, I turned to go home at once; but the tangled path and deepening shadows threw me into confusion, and at the end of a quarter of an hour I found myself completely lost. "Never mind," said I, yielding gracefully to circumstances, "this is just what I meant to do;" so on I plunged, through brake and thicket, until I reached the confines of the forest, where an ancient ruined castle frowned down upon the valley, with my little village sleeping at its feet. I sat down by one of the towers to rest, but had hardly drawn one long breath, when there came a flapping of wings about my head, and raising my eyes I beheld—monstrum horrendum—an owl. He flew to the left of me, fanning my cheek with his heavy grey wings. Superstitious as an ancient, I turned instinctively that he might be on my right and, so dreadful seemed the omen; but hardly had I yielded to this involuntary impulse, when good breeding warned me that the self-love of the work hermit might be wounded;—for an owl has feelings as well as other people. But I was mistaken, he replied to the insult only with a disdainful laugh; and perching himself on the top of the tower, glared at me out of his red eyes with an expression of profound pity.
The laugh irritated me; so I said, wishing to recover his respect if possible, (and here in parentheses be it said that this narrative is addressed, not to those who maintain that animals cannot speak, but to sympathetic beings who enjoy the singing of birds in the woods, and understand their mysterious language; who know what various emotions their songs express; who listen, in short, with reverence to the accents of nature and respond to them;—to such of these we tell this authentic tale, begging the vulgar herd to withdraw from the audience.)