“No scrip my purse doth hold;
     My lyre’s unstrung, alas! 
     But yet upon my glass
     Stands Gustaf’s name in gold.”

Another time the King sent his men for him, with the order to bring him in whatever condition they found him.  “He was found not entirely free from drink, and not very presentable, but was nevertheless carried off, zither and all, to Haga Castle, where he drank some champagne, sang some songs, drank a little more, and finally fell asleep.  The King left him so to go to his supper; and when he returned and found his guest still sleeping, he remarked, ’I wonder what Bellman would say if I awoke him now and asked him to give me a song.’  The poet sat up, blinked with his eyes, and said, ‘Then Bellman would say,—­listen;’ whereupon he sang to the tune of ’Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre’:—­

“’Oh, so heavily, heavily trailing,
The clouds over Haga are sailing,
And the stars their bright glances are veiling,
While woods in the gloom disappear. 
Go, King, thy rest is dear,
Go, King, thy respite taking,
Rest softly, rest softly, then waking,
When dawn through the darkness is breaking,
Thy people with mild rule thou cheer!’

Then he fell into his former position again, and 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.”