Gentle and insinuating, now like the tones of flutes played by children, now like the sobbing of a girl's voice, now like the caressing sweetness with which a mother speaks to her little child--so infinitely manifold but always full of sweet and yearning magic--alien and yet dear and familiar--such was the music that came to my ear. "Where have I heard that before?" I asked myself, listening. And as I thought and thought, an evening of spring arose before my soul--an evening out of a far and perished time.... I had wandered along the bank of a steaming river. The sunset which shone through the jagged young leaves spread a purple carpet over the quiet waters upon which only a swift insect would here and there create circular eddies. At every step I took the dew sprang up before me in gleaming pearls, and a fragrance of wild thyme and roses floated through the air.... There it must have been that I heard this music for the first time. And now it was all clear: The nightingale was singing ... the nightingale. And so spring has come to the upper world. Perhaps it is an evening of May even as that which my spirit recalls. Blue flowers stand upon the meadows.... Goldenrod and lilac mix their blossoms into gold and violet wreaths.... Like torn veils the delicate flakings of the buttercups fly through the twilight.... Surely from the village sounds the stork's rattle ... and surely the distant strains of an accordion are heard.... But the nightingale up there cares little what other music may be made. It sobs and jubilates louder and louder, as if it knew that in the poor dead man's bosom down here the heart beats once more stormily against his side. And at every throb of that heart a hot stream glides through my veins. It penetrates farther and farther until it will have filled my whole body. It seems to me as though I must cry out with yearning and remorse. But my dull stubbornness arises once more: "You have what you desired. So lie here and be still, even though you should be condemned to hear the nightingale's song until the end of the world." The song has grown much softer. Obviously the human steps that now encircle my grave with their sullen resonance have driven the bird to a more distant bush. "Who may it be," I ask myself, "that thinks of wandering to my place of rest on an evening of May when the nightingales are singing." And I listen anew. It sounds almost as though some one up there were weeping. Did I not go my earthly road lonely and unloved? Did I not die in the house of a stranger? Was I not huddled away in the earth by strangers? Who is it that comes to weep at my grave? And each one of the tears that is shed above there falls glowing upon my breast....