--
What is this hunger and this thirst to sing,
To laugh, to fight,--to hope, to be believed?
And what is truth? And who did make the stars?
* * * * *
I have to pay for fifty thousand hates,
Greeds, cruelties; such barbarous tortured days
A tiger would disdain;--for all my kind!
Not my one mother, not my own of kin,--
All, all, who wear the motley in the heart
Or on the body:--for all caged glories
And trodden wings, and sorrows laughed to scorn.
I,--I!--At last.
VERONIKA
Ah, me! How can I say:
Yet make them happier than they let you be?
PIPER
Woman, you could!--They know not how to be
Happy! They turn to darkness and to woe
All that is made for joy. They deal with men
As, far across the mountains, in the south,
Men trap a singing thrush, put out his eyes,--
And cage him up and bid him then to sing--
Sing before God that made him,--yes, to sing!
* * * * *
I save the children.--Yes, I save them, so,
Save them forever, who shall save the world!--
Yes, even Hamelin.--
But for only _you_,
What do they know of Children?--Pfui, _their own_!
Who knows a treasure, when it is his own?
Do they not whine: '_Five mouths around the table_;
_And a poor harvest. And now comes one more_!
_God chastens us_!'--Pfui!--
VERONIKA
[apart, dully]
. . . But I must be patient.
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