mysterious people

There’s a website devoted to them, with a story about Kaspar Hauser, Wild Child of Europe. When he was found:

He was wearing a round felt peasant’s hat lined with yellow silk, an old pair of high-heeled half boots that didn’t fit, a black silk scarf, a grey cloth jacket, a linen vest, and grey cloth trousers. He was carrying a white and red checked handkerchief with the initials K.H. embroidered in red, and some rags decorated with blue and white flowers, a (possibly) German key, a small envelope containing gold dust (!), and prayer beads made of horn. He also had some printed religious texts in his pockets, including a spiritual manual entitled ‘The Art of Replacing Lost Time and Years Badly Spent’, a cynical title in view of what was later found out about his history.

I remember studying this poem in German in college – I wrote out these stanzas in the notebook I was keeping at that time. The words still seem so familiar.

Kaspar Hauser Lied

Ernsthaft war sein Wohnen im Schatten des Baums
Und rein sein Antlitz.
Gott sprach eine sanfte Flamme zu seinem Herzen:
O Mensch!

by Georg Trakl