Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/121



I will now give thee a picture from Sweden, said the Moon.—In the midst of black pine woods, not far from the melancholy shore of Roxe, lies the old convent-church of Wreta. My beams passed through the grating in the walls into the spacious vault where kings sleep in great stone coffins. On the wall above them, is placed, as an image of earthly magnificence, a king’s crown, made of wood, painted and gilded, and held firm by a wooden pin, which is driven into the wall. The worm has eaten through the gilded wood, the spider has spun its web from the crown to the coffin; it is a mourning banner, perishable, as mourning for the dead!

How still they sleep! I remember them so