* * * * *

Oh, let me keep them!  I will bring them to You,
Still nights, and breathless mornings; they shall touch
Your hands and feet with all their swarming hands,
Like showering petals warm on furrowed ground,—­
All sweetness!  They will make Thee whole again,
With love.  Thou wilt lookup and smile on us!

* * * * *

Why not?  I know—­the half—­You will be saying. 
You will be thinking of Your Mother.—­Ah,
But she was different.  She was not as they. 
She was more like . . . this one, the wife of Kurt!
Of Kurt!  No, no; ask me not this, not this! 
Here is some dawn of day for Hamelin,—­now!
-Tis hearts of men You want.  Not mumbled prayers;
Not greed and carven tombs, not misers’ candles;
No offerings, more, from men that feed on men;
Eternal psalms and endless cruelties! . . . 
Even from now, there may be hearts in Hamelin,
Once stabbed awake!
[He pleads, defends, excuses passionately; before his will gives
way, as the arrow flies from the bow-string.]
  —­I will not give them back! 
And Jan,—­for Jan, that little one, that dearest
To Thee and me, hark,—­he is wonderful. 
Ask it not of me.  Thou dost know I cannot!

* * * * *

Look, Lonely Man!  You shall have all of us
To wander the world over, where You stand
At all the crossways, and on lonely hills,—­
Outside the churches, where the lost ones
And the wayfaring men, and thieves and wolves
And lonely creatures, and the ones that sing! 
We will show all men what we hear and see;
And we will make Thee lift Thy head, and smile.

* * * * *

No, no, I cannot give them all!  No, no.—­
Why wilt Thou ask it?—­Let me keep but one. 
No, no, I will not. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . Have Thy way.--I will!

Curtain

ACT IV

SCENE:  Hamelin market-place.

It is early morning; so dark that only a bleak twilight glimmers in the square; the little streets are dim.  Everywhere gloom and stillness.  In the house of KURT, beside the Minster, there is one window-light behind a curtain in the second story.  At the casements, down right and left, sit OLD CLAUS and OLD URSULA, wan and motionless as the dead.

The church-bell, which likewise seems to have aged, croaks softly, twice.  PETER the Sacristan stands by the bell-rope.

OLD URSULA
No, no.  They’ll never come.  I told ye so. 
They all are gone.  There will be nothing young
To follow us to the grave.

OLD CLAUS
  No, no,—­not one!

[The Minster-door opens, and out come certain of the townsfolk from early mass.  They look unnaturally old and colorless.  Their steps lag drearily.—­HANS the Butcher and his wife; AXEL the Smith with his wife, and PETER the Cobbler, meet, on their way to the little street, left, and greet one another with painstaking, stricken kindness.  They speak in broken voices.