Page:Poet Lore, volume 34, 1923.djvu/57

 mother yearning for thy lost son, comfort thy soul, thrice crying forth thy sorrow!

Nyola.—Sorrow! Woe! Sorrow! O my grief, be dumb no longer, but cry woe into the whole wide world! O people, people weep with me and mourn!

Populace.—Woe! Woe to thee, woe to us! O queen, we weep with thee; and if thou shouldst rend thy veil and tear thy hair and wring thy hands—which of us would marvel and say: “It is too much”? O, woe, woe!

Nyola.—I beat my breast; blinded by my tears I no longer behold the blazing eye of day, since all the light of my soul is extinguished. My husband, alas, why hast thou left me here alone? My son, why hast thou departed from me? Art thou too in the shadow of the grave, deaf and dumb to my cries even as thy father? Art thou too. pale and blind like him, there in the palace on the bier, who but recently was a man and now is a phantom? O, woe, woe, woe to me!

Populace.—Woe! Sorrow!

Nyola.—Now the funeral pyre stands ready and the greedy fire already hungers for the remains of him who once was called king and lord of many fates! With its hundredfold tongue, fire, the most rapacious of beasts, hungrily lashes the dead man and consumes him, leaving naught but ashes of my bliss, sad ashes, dead, worthless—like this heart here!

Old Men.—Take heed, woman, that thy righeous mourning turn not into blasphemy! Fire is holy; the ashes of man are sacred.

Nyola.—It is easy for him to rebuke whom no wild anguish scourges until the blood flows! You have lost only a king, but I have lost all! Now once despair has set its talons in my heart! Already I hear in the palace phantomlike steps (arises), the muffled voices of those who lift the bier that they may carry out the body to be the spoil of the flames! I no longer summon you to cry woe or sorrow with me! We must now be reverently silent and follow the coffin and gather together the ashes and heap up a high grave mound: to do all that is now our duty, forgetting ourselves completely! Then only shall I sink again into my living misery and dead nothingness!

Old Men.—We will go with thee, unhappy woman! Let thy tears flow in silence. It is the fate of man to leave all behind him here and to return into the bosom of mother earth. It is wise to submit to fate as silently and peacefully as in autumn a tree fades