The little old man knows very well how badly he sings; he places himself behind the others, and does not push forward to the grave. But sing he does; it would not matter so much if the clerk's voice should fail on one or other note, his brother is there and helps him.
At the churchyard no one laughs at the singing; but when people go home and have thrown off their devoutness, then they speak about the service, and then they laugh at the clerk's singing--laugh both at his and his brother's. The clerk does not mind it, it is the same to him; but his brother thinks about it and suffers from it; he dreads the Sunday the whole week, but still he comes punctually to the churchyard and does his duty. But you in your coffin, you do not think so badly of the singing. You think that it is good music. Is it not true that one would like to be buried in Svartsjö, if only for the sake of that singing?
It says in the hymn that life is but a walk towards death, and when the two old men sing this--the two who have suffered for each other during their whole life--then one understands better than ever before how wearisome it is to live, and one is so entirely satisfied with being dead.
And then the singing stops, and the clergyman throws earth on the coffin and says a prayer over you. Then the two old voices sing: 'I walk towards heaven.' And they do not sing this verse any better than the former; their voices grow more feeble and querulous the longer they sing. But for you a great and wide expanse opens, and you soar upwards with tremulous joy, and everything earthly fades and disappears.
But still the last which you hear of things earthly tells of faithfulness and love. And in the midst of your trembling flight the poor song will awake memories of all the faithfulness and love you have met with here below, and this will bear you upwards. This will fill you with radiance and make you beautiful as an angel.
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
In this Latin-1 text version: text in italics is marked with underscores, e.g. _italics_ text in small capitals is shown in upper-case.
Hyphenation is inconsistent, for example sheepskin, sheep-skin and sheep's-skin all occur. These have been left as printed.