Atma had slept, he told them, had been aroused by their approach, had hardly realized the cause of his awakening.  “The swan is difficult to rear,” he said, “if indeed such effort be not fruitless.”

“It is fruitless,” they assented, “but we need not search hereabout if you have not seen it.  You must have heard the flap of his wing had it alighted near you,” and they turned their steps in a contrary direction.  Atma watched their vain search until on the opposite side of the pool they disappeared into the wood.

He stole a glance into the hiding place of the swan.  The soft plumage had not the dazzling purity which he had known, and the beautiful neck that should be proudly curved, drooped.

“Poor imprisoned creature,” he thought, “grown in bondage, alien to its own nature of strength and beauty.”

He watched it unperceived, timidly washing its plumage in the still deep water.  Soon it floated further from the bank.  Now and then it waited and listened.  The story of its captivity was told again in its stealthy, trembling happiness.

But high overhead, between it and a disc of blue sky, intervened a stream of lordly birds flying south.  From their ranks wafted a cry, and as it fell there rose a wild echo, an unfamiliar note from the captive swan.[1] It rose skyward, wearied wing and broken spirit forgotten.  It might be danger, but it was Home, and like a disembodied spirit it ascended to a life that, altogether new, was to be for the first time altogether familiar.

A thought of kindred saddened the heart of Atma.  In the loss of parents and brethren lay, he thought, the sole cause of the heaviness that oppressed him.  Their restoration would have made existence complete.  He had lost them before he had awakened to the knowledge that those we love are even, when nearest, very far away.  Humanity does not hear the voice of kindred on earth.

I find
In all the earth
Like things with like combined,
How happy, happy from their birth
Are silly things, in guileless mirth
Who seek them out and greatly love their kind.

How e’en
The crafty snake,
Like dove of gentle mien,
Doth with his fellows converse take
The love-notes well from wood and brake
That tell betwixt some lives some barriers intervene.

Ah me,
Shall only one
Of golden things that be,
One only underneath the sun
In dolour here life’s journey run,
Speeding the way alone to great Eternity?

The Soul
It sits apart,
Craving a prison dole
Of ruth and healing for its hurt,
As piteous captive should cajole,
Vainly, unheeding ear afar in stranger mart.

Footnote: 

[1] That this incident is suggested by Hans Andersen’s beautiful story is so evident as scarcely to need acknowledgment.  The thoughts embodied here occurred to me in such early childhood that I do not experience a sense of guilt in thus appropriating the lesson which I have no doubt the writer intended.