But a day will come when the fire in my veins will be quenched, when
winter will dwell in my heart, when his snow flakes will whiten my
locks, and his mists will dim my eyes. Then my friends will lie in their
lonely graves, and I alone shall remain like a solitary stalk forgotten
by the reaper. A new race will have sprung up with new desires and new
ideas; full of wonder I shall hear new names and listen to new songs,
for the old names will be forgotten, and I myself forgotten, perhaps
still honoured by a few, scorned by many and loved by none! And then the
rosy-cheeked boys will spring around me and place the old harp in my
trembling hand, and say, laughing, "You have been long silent, you
greybeard; sing us again songs of your youthful dreams!"
Then I will grasp the harp, and my old joys and sorrows will awake,
tears will again spring from my dead eyes; there will be Spring again in
my breast, sweet tones of sorrow will tremble on the harpstrings, I
shall see again the blue stream and the marble palaces and the lovely
faces of women and girls--and I will sing a song of the flowers of
Brenta.
It will be my last song; the stars will gaze on me as in the nights of
my youth, the loving moonlight will once more kiss my cheeks, the spirit
chorus of nightingales long dead will sound from afar, my sleep-drunken
eyes will close, my soul will echo with the notes of my harp; I shall
smell the flowers of Brenta.
A tree will shadow my grave. I would gladly have it a palm, but that
tree will not grow in the North. It will be a linden, and on summer
evenings lovers will sit there and caress; the green-finch, who rocks
himself on the branches, will be listening silently, and my linden will
rustle tenderly over the heads of the happy ones, who will be so happy
that they will have no time to read what is written on the white
tombstone. But when later the lover has lost his love, then he will come
again to the well-known linden, and sigh, and weep, and gaze long and
oft upon the stone, and read the inscription--"He loved the flowers of
Brenta."