Prevod

“Whenever a good child dies, an angel of God comes down to Earth, takes the dead child in his arms, spreads his great white wings, and flies over all the places the child has loved, gathering a whole handful of flowers, which they carry up to God to bloom there even more beautifully than on Earth. The good Lord presses all the flowers to his heart, but the flower he loves best he kisses, and then it is given a voice and can join in the song of heavenly bliss!”

All this an angel of God was telling as he carried a dead child away to Heaven, and the child listened as though in a dream. They flew over the places at home where the little one had played, and passed through gardens full of lovely flowers.

“Which shall we take with us to plant in Heaven?” asked the angel. There stood a slender, lovely rose tree, but a cruel hand had broken its stem, so that all its branches, laden with large, half-open buds, hung withered all around it.

“The poor tree!” said the child. “Take it, so that it may bloom up there with God!” And the angel took it, and kissed the child for saying so, and the little one half opened its eyes. They gathered some of the splendid, showy flowers, but also took the lowly marigold and the wild pansy.

“Now we have flowers!” said the child, and the angel nodded, but still they did not fly up to God. It was night, and all was quiet. They stayed in the great city, hovering along one of its narrowest streets, where whole heaps of straw, ashes, and rubbish lay strewn about. It had been moving day! There were broken plates, bits of plaster, rags, and the crowns of old hats—everything that was no longer fit to be seen.

And amid all this disorder the angel pointed down to the shards of a flowerpot, and to a clump of earth that had fallen out of it, held together by the roots of a large, withered wildflower, which was of no use anymore and had therefore been thrown into the street.

“We shall take that one with us!” said the angel. “I will tell you about it as we fly!” And so they flew, and the angel told his story: “Down there in that narrow street, in the low cellar, lived a poor, sick boy. From his earliest childhood he had always been bedridden. When he was at his very strongest, he could go up and down the little room a couple of times on crutches, and that was all. On a few summer days, the sun shone into the cellar entrance for half an hour or so, and when the little boy sat there, letting the warm sunshine fall on him, and saw the red blood glowing through his delicate fingers as he held them before his face, people would say, ‘Well, he has been out today!’ He knew the woods in their lovely spring green only because the neighbour’s son brought him the first beech branch of the season. He would hold it above his head and dream that he was beneath the beeches, where the sun shone and the birds sang. One spring day the neighbour’s boy also brought him some wildflowers, and among them, by chance, was one with its roots still attached. So it was planted in a flowerpot and set in the window close to his bed. And the flower had been planted by a lucky hand: it grew, put out new shoots, and bore its flowers every year. It became the sick boy’s loveliest garden, his little treasure on this earth. He watered and tended it, and made sure it caught every sunbeam, down to the very last that slipped across the low window. And the flower itself grew into his dreams, for it was for him that it bloomed, spread its fragrance, and delighted the eye. He turned towards it as he lay dying, when our Lord called him home. For a year now he has been with God; for a year the flower has stood forgotten in the window and withered, and so, when the household moved, it was thrown out into the sweepings in the street. And that is the flower, the poor, withered flower, we have brought with us in our bouquet, for it has given more joy than the most magnificent flower in a queen’s garden!”

“But how do you know all this?” asked the child whom the angel was carrying up towards Heaven. “I know!” said the angel. “I was that very sick little boy who walked on crutches! I know my own flower well!”

And the child opened its eyes fully and looked into the angel’s beautiful, happy face, and at that very moment they were in God’s Heaven, where there was joy and bliss. And God pressed the dead child to his heart, and it was given wings like the other angel’s and flew hand in hand with him. And God pressed all the flowers to his heart, but the poor, withered wildflower he kissed, and it was given a voice and sang with all the angels who hovered about God, some very near, others beyond them in great circles, farther and farther away into infinity, yet all equally happy. And they all sang, small and great, the good, blessed child and the poor wildflower that had lain withered, cast away among the sweepings and moving-day rubbish in the narrow, dark street.