Page:The children of the night.djvu/85

 Pity, at first, all breathing creatures On this bewildered earth. I studied Their faces and made for myself the story Of all their scattered lives. Like brothers And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy Between those people and me. But somehow, As time went on, there came queer glances Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me Harassed my pride with a crazed impression That every face in the surging city Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers, Now and then, as I walked and wearied My wasted life twice over in bearing With all my sorrow the sorrows of others,— Till I found myself their fool. Then I trembled,— A poor scared thing,—and their prying faces Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing At me and my fate. My God, I could feel it— That laughter! And then the children caught it; And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened. And then when I met the man who had weakened A woman's love to his own desire, It seemed to me that all hell were laughing In fiendish concert! I was their victim— And his, and hate's. And there was the struggle. As long as the earth we tread holds something A tortured heart can love, the meaning