Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/At Hans Andersen's Funeral

by Sarah Piatt

AT HANS ANDERSEN'S FUNERAL.

Why, all the children in all the world had listened around his knee,
    But the wonder-tales must end;
So, all the children in all the world came into the church to see
    The still face of their friend.

"But were any fairies there?" Why, yes, little questioner of mine,
    For the fairies loved him too;
And all the fairies in all the world, as far as the moon can shine,
    Sobbed, "Oh! what shall we do?"

Well, the children who played with the North's white swans, away in the North's white snows,
    Made wreaths of fir for his head;
And the South's dark children scattered the scents of the South's red rose
    Down at the feet of the dead.

Yes, all the children in all the world were there with their tears that day;
    But the boy who loved him best,
Alone in a damp and lonesome place (not far from his grave) he lay—
    And sadder than all the rest.

"Mother," he moaned, "never mind the king—why, what if the king is there?
    Never mind your faded shawl:
The king may never see it; for the king will hardly care
    To look at your clothes at all."

So, close to his coffin she crouched, in the breath of the burial flowers,
    And begged for a bud or a leaf:—
"If I cannot have one, O sirs, to take to that poor little room of ours,
    My boy will die of his grief!"

My child, if the king was there, and I think he was (but then I forget),
    Why, that was a little thing.
Did a dead man ever lift his head from its place in the coffin yet,
    Do you think, to bow to the king?

'But could he not see him up in Heaven?" I never was there, you know;
    But Heaven is too far, I fear,
For the ermine, and purple, and gold, that make up the king, to show
    So bravely as they do here.

But he saw the tears of the peasant-child, by the beautiful light he took
    From the earth in his close-shut eyes;
For tears are the sweetest of all the things we shall see, when we come to look
    From the windows of the skies.