The Generous Prince's Gift

High above the bustling cobblestone city, atop a tall granite column in the central square, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with delicate leaves of fine gold, his eyes were two bright blue sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on the hilt of his ceremonial sword. During his mortal life inside the Palace of Sans-Souci, sorrow was forbidden from entering the garden walls, but now from his high vantage, he saw all the misery, hunger, and destitution of the city below.

One crisp autumn evening, a little migrating swallow named Pip flew between the Prince's gilded feet to rest for the night on his long journey south to Egypt. As Pip tucked his head beneath his wing, three heavy drops fell on his feathers. Looking up into the starlight, the bird was astonished to see lead tears coursing down the sculpted bronze cheeks of the gilded statue.

'Little Swallow,' whispered the Prince, 'in a dark alley far across the river, a poor seamstress weeps beside her feverish child as she embroiders passion-flowers on a court satin gown. Take the ruby from my sword hilt and lay it upon her wooden table.' Pip gently plucked the glowing gem with his beak, flew through the open attic window, and left the jewel beside the woman's silver thimble.

Night after night, at the Prince's earnest pleading, the swallow postponed his flight to the sunny palm groves of the Nile. He pried the rare sapphire from the Prince's left eye for a starving playwright shivering in a freezing garret, and the sapphire from his right eye for a weeping matchgirl whose wares had fallen into the muddy gutter.

Now completely blind, the Prince asked Pip to strip his body of its fine gold leaf, flake by flake, and distribute the precious metal among the hungry children huddled under the stone bridges. As winter arrived with biting frost and heavy snowfall, the once-glittering statue stood dull, gray, and stripped of all outward splendor, while the children ran through the streets eating warm bread.

Pip's wings grew stiff with frost, but his devotion to the blind Prince held him fast to the cold granite pedestal. Knowing his strength was failing in the bitter wind, the little bird kissed the Prince on the cheek and fluttered down to his feet, resting peacefully as the statue's lead heart snapped in two with a sharp, echoing crack.

The next morning, the Town Councillors pulled down the weathered statue, declaring it too drab, dark, and ragged for public display in the central market square, and melted the bronze torso in a roaring iron furnace, tossing the unbroken lead heart onto a dust heap beside the little dead swallow.

When spring arrived in the mountain valley, a fragrant white thornbush blossomed over the dust heap, covering the lead heart and the brave swallow in pure white petals, as happy children gathered to play, laugh, and sing cheerful morning songs beneath the flowering green boughs in the bright warm sunshine.