was carried home asleep
with a little gift in his hand."

The task of collecting, preserving, and publishing his works fell
entirely upon his friends; if it had depended on him, they would
probably never have been collected, much less published.

During the last fifteen years of his life, from 1780 to 1795, his health
grew very poor. In 1791 he was invited to be present at the distribution
of degrees at Upsala, and at the dinner he returned a toast with a song
born of the moment; but his voice had grown so weak from lung trouble
that only those nearest to him could hear him. To add to his sufferings,
he had to meet the great sorrow of his King's death at the hand of a
murderer, and his poem on the 'Death and Memory of the King' was not of
a nature to make friends for him at the new court. Thus it happened
that, poor and broken in health, he was put into the debtor's prison in
the very castle where he had been so happy a guest. Hallman and Krexel
and others of his best friends, as devoted to him as ever, were unable
to obtain his release; but he was at last bailed out by some one, who as
recompense asked him to sing one of his jolly songs, and in his poor
broken voice he sang. 'Drink out thy glass, see, Death awaits thee.'
Atterbom remarks about the man in question, "And maybe he did not find
that song so jolly after all."

While in prison he sent in a petition to the King,--somewhat different
from his first petition to Gustavus III.,--in which he asked permission
to live in the castle until his death. The following is one of
the verses:--

"Spring commands; the birds are singing,
Bees are swarming, fishes play;
Now and then the zephyrs stray,
Breath of life the poet bringing.
Lift my load of sorrow clinging,
Spare me one small nook, I pray."

Of his death Atterbom writes as follows:--

"He had been the favorite of the nation and the King, content
with the mere necessities of life, free from every care, not
even desiring the immortality of fame; moderate in everything
except in enthusiasm, he had enjoyed to the full what he
wanted,--friendship, wine, and music. Now he lived to see the
shadows fall over his life and genius. Feeling that his last
hour was not far off, he sent word to his nearest friends
that a meeting with them as in old times would be dear to
him. He came to meet them almost a shadow, but with his old
frien