The Happy Prince

The statue of the Happy Prince stood on a tall column high above the city. Thin leaves of gold covered him from head to foot, two bright sapphires served as his eyes, and a large red ruby was set in the hilt of his sword. He was admired by everyone who passed beneath him.

One evening, late in the autumn, a little Swallow flew over the city. His friends had left for Egypt six weeks earlier, but he had fallen in love with a slender Reed and stayed behind. She would never leave the river, so he had set off for Egypt alone. He landed between the statue's feet, and he was just tucking his head under his wing when a heavy drop of water splashed onto his feathers. Looking up, he saw that the Prince's eyes were filled with tears.

"When I was alive," the Prince explained, "I lived in a palace whose high walls kept every sorrow out. From up here, I can see every poor street in my city. They gave me a heart of lead, and even so, I can't stop crying." In a narrow street, he said, a seamstress was sewing flowers onto a satin gown for a palace ball. Her little boy lay ill with a fever, begging for oranges that she could not afford. Would the Swallow take her the ruby? The Swallow, who was eager to reach Egypt, agreed to stay for one night only.

He laid the ruby on the table beside the seamstress, who had fallen asleep from exhaustion, and fanned the boy's hot forehead with his wings until the child slept. But one night became many. The next evening, the Prince asked him to pluck out one of his sapphire eyes for a young writer who was too cold and hungry to finish his play. The other eye was given to a little match girl whose matches had fallen into the gutter.

"Now that you're blind," said the Swallow, "I'll stay with you always." Every day, he flew over the city and told the Prince who was suffering. Leaf by leaf, the gold that covered the statue was stripped away and given to the poor, until the Prince looked dull and gray.

Then came the snow, and then the frost. The Swallow grew colder and colder, but he refused to leave the Prince. At last he had just enough strength to flutter up to his shoulder. "Goodbye, dear Prince," he murmured. "May I kiss your hand?" "I'm glad you're finally leaving for Egypt," said the Prince, "but kiss me on the lips, because I love you." "It isn't Egypt I'm going to," the Swallow whispered, and having kissed the Prince on the lips, he fell dead at his feet. At that very moment, something cracked inside the statue: the lead heart had broken in two.

The next morning, the Mayor looked up in disgust. "The Happy Prince has become so shabby! And there's a dead bird at his feet!" So the statue was pulled down and melted in a furnace. At the foundry, however hot they made the fire, the broken lead heart would not melt. In the end, it was thrown onto a dust heap, where it came to rest beside the dead Swallow.