Page:Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918).djvu/79

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MADNESS

She thinks: I am—Have you not seen?
Who are you then, Marie?
I am a Queen, I am a Queen!
To your knee, to your knee!

And then she weeps: I was—a child—
Who were you then, Marie?
Know you that I was no man's child,
Poor and in rags—said she.

And then a Princess I became
To whom men bend their knees;
To princes things are not the same
As those a beggar sees.

And those things which have made you great
Came to you, tell me, when?
One night, one night, one night quite late,
Things became different then.

I walked the lane which presently
With strung chords seemed to bend;
Then Marie became Melody
And danced from end to end.

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