Children
Oh, pipe!  Oh, play!  Oh, play and make us dance! 
Oh, play, and make us run away from school!

Piper
Why, what are these?

Children
[scampering round him]
  We’re mice, we’re mice, we’re mice! . . . 
We’re mice, we’re mice!  We’ll eat up everything!

MARTIN’S wife
[calling]
’T is church-time.  La, what will the neighbors say?

Ilse
[Waving her doll]
Oh, please do play something for Fridolin!

AXEL’S wife
Do hear the child.  She’s quite the little mother!

Piper
A little mother?  Ugh!  How horrible. 
That fairy thing, that princess,—­no, that Child! 
A little mother?
[To her]
  Drop the ugly thing!

MARTIN’S wife
Now, on my word! and what’s amiss with mothers? 
Are mothers horrible?
[The piper is struck with painful memories.]

Piper
  No, no.  But—­care
And want and pain and age. . .
[Turns back to them with a bitter change of voice]
  And penny-wealth,—­
And penny-counting.—­Penny prides and fears—­
Of what the neighbors say the neighbors say!—­

MARTIN’S wife
And were you born without a mother, then?

All
Yes, you there!  Ah, I told you!  He’s no man. 
He’s of the devil.

MARTIN’S wife
  Who was your mother, then?

Piper
[fiercely]
Mine!—­Nay, I do not know.  For when I saw her,
She was a thing so trodden, lost and sad,
I cannot think that she was ever young,
Save in the cherishing voice.—­She was a stroller;
My father was a stroller.—­So, you have it! 
And since she clave to him, and hunger too,
The Church’s ban was on her.—­Either live,
Mewed up forever,—­she! to be a nun;
Or keep her life-long wandering with the wind;
The very name of wife stript from her troth. 
That was my mother.—­And she starved and sang;
And like the wind, she roved and lurked and shuddered
Outside your lighted windows, and fled by,
Storm-hunted, trying to outstrip the snow,
South, south, and homeless as a broken bird,—­
Limping and hiding!—­And she fled, and laughed,
And kept me warm; and died!  To you, a Nothing;
Nothing, forever, oh, you well-housed mothers! 
As always, always for the lighted windows
Of all the world, the Dark outside is nothing;
And all that limps and hides there in the dark;
Famishing,—­broken,—­lost! 
  And I have sworn
For her sake and for all, that I will have
Some justice, all so late, for wretched men,
Out of these same smug towns that drive us forth
After the show!—­Or scheme to cage us up
Out of the sunlight; like a squirrel’s heart
Torn out and drying in the market-place. 
My mother!  Do you know what mothers are?—­
Your children!  Do you know them?  Ah, not you! 
There’s not one here but it would follow me,
For all your bleating!