From the Cradle to the Grave, Excerpt

Whosoever wants to travel, through the whole world: Truly needs some, kreuzers of cash: And some good sausage. I still live in a tent today: where, still, the house-dog barks: I am terribly thirsty.

What do you want with my child: It is, after all, blind every day: Has neither house, nor home: It goes to one terrible foe: He means to scab it: this is the loveliest rhyme: Oh, new courage, oh, young blood: come home my child, come home.

Signed, Adolf Wölfli, Author of the following details,

Bern, Switzerland, Europe, 1912.

I can rock the whale, the whale rides it.

Abandoned in the cell: wounded, ill and blind: Borne by the wave: sit today, my dear child: whosoever’s hungry, may bark: the warhose flies in the wind: the pointer with the trowel: is truly my worst foe.

And today it’s quick again: But we have gone astray: If you want to, my child, then Chirre: It’s truly naught, but Schmirre: Yes, I'm blacker than the chimney: And if you want, then girre: We do not eat, we do not drink: We ascend, to God.