Waldfried by Berthold Auerbach

Days have passed in which I did not once take my pen in hand; I could not. Must I indeed write of this? What forces me to do so?

"Above all things, leave nothing unfinished that you have once begun," was a maxim of hers; and I must therefore tell of her death. When the fogs of autumn and the frosts of winter scatter the foliage of the trees, a branch may here and there be seen to which a few leaves are still clinging. Why should those alone have remained?