The Happy Prince

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was covered from head to foot in thin leaves of fine gold, with two bright sapphires for eyes and a red ruby glowing on his sword hilt. Everyone in the city admired him. When a little boy cried for something he could not have, his mother would say, “Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince? He never cries for anything.”

One night a little Swallow flew over the rooftops on his way to Egypt, where all his friends had already gone. He had stayed behind because he had fallen in love with a beautiful Reed who grew by the river. Their courtship lasted the whole summer, but when autumn came he found he had grown tired of her, for she had no conversation and would not leave her home to travel with him, so he said goodbye and set off alone toward the warm south. Night caught him over the city, and looking for shelter he saw the golden statue and settled between its feet. “I shall sleep here,” he thought. “A fine high perch, with plenty of fresh air.”

He had barely tucked his head under his wing when a drop of water fell on him, and then another. He looked up in surprise, for the sky was clear, and saw that the Prince’s eyes were full of tears running down his golden cheeks.

“Who are you?” asked the Swallow.

“I am the Happy Prince.”

“Then why are you weeping? You have quite drenched me.”

The Prince told him that when he was alive, in his palace where sorrow was never allowed to enter, he had played and danced all day behind high walls and never once wondered what lay beyond them. They had called him happy, and happy he had been, if pleasure is the same thing as happiness. “So I lived, and so I died,” he said. “And now that I am dead they have set me up so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead, I cannot help but weep.”

Then the Prince spoke of a poor house he could see down a narrow street, where a seamstress sat stitching flowers onto a gown, her face thin and her fingers pricked raw by the needle. Her little boy lay ill with fever in the corner, crying for oranges, and she had nothing to give him but water from the river. “Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not carry her the ruby from my sword hilt? My feet are fixed to this pedestal and I cannot go myself.”

“I am expected in Egypt,” said the Swallow, but the Prince looked so sad that he agreed to stay just one night and be his messenger. He worked the ruby loose and flew with it through the city, over the palace where a girl fretted about a ball gown, to the poor house, where he laid the jewel on the woman’s table and fanned the sick boy’s forehead with his wings until the fever eased and the child slipped into a sweet sleep. Flying back, the Swallow told the Prince, “It is strange, I feel quite warm now, though the night is so cold.”

“That is because you have done a good deed,” said the Prince.

The next evening the Swallow came to say a real goodbye, but the Prince asked him to stay one more night. Across the city, in a cold garret, a young playwright sat hunched over his papers, too hungry and too frozen to finish the play he was writing. “Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, take him one of my sapphire eyes.” The Swallow wept at the thought, but he obeyed, and left the jewel gleaming among the withered violets on the writer’s desk. “I am beginning to be appreciated,” the young man cried, full of joy, never guessing where the gift had come from.

On the third night the Prince asked once more. In the square below stood a little match girl who had dropped her matches in the gutter and spoiled them all; if she went home with no money her father would beat her. “Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “pluck out my other eye and give it to her.”

“Then you will be blind,” said the Swallow, but he did as he was asked, and slipped the jewel into the girl’s hand. She laughed at the pretty piece of glass and ran off happily. When the Swallow returned, he said, “You cannot see any more, so now I will stay with you always,” and no matter how the Prince begged him to fly on to warm Egypt, he would not leave.

He perched on the Prince’s shoulder and told him stories of the far countries he had seen, of golden temples and painted birds, but the Prince said that nothing was more wonderful than the suffering of ordinary people, and asked him to fly over the city once more and tell him what he found. So the Swallow flew above the streets and saw the rich feasting while beggars sat at their gates, and pale, starving children peering listlessly from dark doorways, and two small boys huddled together under a bridge to keep warm. He came back and told the Prince everything.

“I am covered in fine gold,” said the Prince. “Strip it off, leaf by leaf, and take it to my poor.” So the Swallow picked away the gold, one leaf at a time, until the Prince was quite dull and gray, and carried it to the poor of the city, and their thin faces grew rosy again, and children laughed and played in the streets. “We have bread now,” they said.

Then the snow came, and after the snow the frost, and the streets turned white and glittering. The little Swallow grew colder every day, but he loved the Prince too much to leave him. He ate the crumbs he could find and beat his wings to keep warm, but at last he knew he had not the strength left to fly at all. He gathered himself and rose once more to the Prince’s shoulder. “Goodbye, dear Prince,” he whispered. “Will you let me kiss your hand?”

“I am glad you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,” said the Prince. “You have stayed too long here. But you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.”

“It is not to Egypt that I am going,” the Swallow said softly. “I am going to the House of Death.” And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet. At that same moment something cracked inside the statue, as if a thing of great value had broken. It was the leaden heart, split quietly in two.

The next morning the Mayor walked below the column with his councillors. “Dear me, how shabby the Happy Prince has become,” he said. “The ruby has fallen from his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is no longer golden at all. He is little better than a beggar now, and look, there is a dead bird at his feet.” So the statue was taken down and melted in a furnace. But the broken lead heart would not melt, however fierce the fire, and the workmen threw it onto a rubbish heap, where the little dead Swallow lay beside it.

“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” God said to one of His angels, and the angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird. “You have chosen rightly,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”