Piper
[Facing softly up and down, with the restless cunning
of a squirrel at watch]
Pfui!  But who else?  Of course.  This same old Devil! 
This kind old Devil takes on him all we do! 
Who else is such a refuge in this world? 
Who could have burned the abbey in this place,
Where holy men did live?  Why, ’t was the Devil! 
And who did guard us one secluded spot
By burying a wizard at this cross-ways?—­
So none dare search the haunted, evil place! 
The Devil for a landlord!—­So say I! 
And all we poor, we strollers, for his tenants;
We gypsies and we pipers in the world,
And a few hermits and sword-swallowers,
And all the cast-aways that Holy Church
Must put in cages—­cages—­to the end!
[To Michael, who is overcome]
Take heart!  I swear,—­by all the stars that chime! 
I’ll not have things in Cages!

Michael
  Barbara! 
So young,—­so young and beautiful!

Piper
  And fit
To marry with friend Michael!

Michael
  Do not mock.

Piper
I mock not.—­(Baa—­Baa—­Barbara!)

Michael
  Ay, she laughed,
On that first day.  But still she gazed.—­I saw
Her, all the while!  I swallowed—­

Piper
  Prodigies! 
A thousand swallows, and no summer yet! 
But now,—­’t is late to ask,—­why did you not
Swallow her father?—­That had saved us all.

Michael
They will be coming soon.  They will cut off
All her bright hair,—­and wall her in forever.

Piper
Never.  They shall not.

Michael
[dully]
  Will you give them back,
Now?

Piper
I will never give them back.  Be sure.

Michael
And she is made an offering for the town! 
I heard it of the gossips.—­They have sworn
Jacobus shall not keep his one ewe-lamb
While all the rest go childless.

Piper
  And I swear
That he shall give her up,—­to none but thee!

Michael
You cannot do it!

Piper
  Have I lived like Cain,
But to make good one hour of Life and Sun? 
And have I got this Hamelin in my hands,
To make it pay its thousand cruelties
With such a fool’s one-more? . . . 
—­You know right well,
’T was not the thousand guilders that I wanted
For thee, or me, or any!—­Ten would serve. 
But there it ached; there, in the money-bag
That serves the town of Hamelin for an heart! 
That stab was mortal!  And I thrust it deep. 
Life, life, I wanted; safety,—­sun and wind!—­
And but to show them how that daily fear
They call their faith, is made of blasphemies
That would put out the Sun and Moon and Stars,
Early, for some last Judgment!
[He laughs, up to the tree-tops]
  And the Lord,
Where will He get His harpers and singing-men
And them that laugh for joy?—­From Hamelin guilds?—­
Will you imagine Kurt the Councillor
Trying to sing?
[He looks at his pipe again; then listens intently.