STOLEN YOUTH

Closed round thee, and never asks whose son-wine the Circle was! There is no way out, perhaps no way out. Thou couldst escape, if thou wouldst, Into mother's loving arms, Till the mist in thy heart is tightened. In its winding perilous paths Fate guides you: what can beat you to dust beyond Death's losses, and what can lift you to the stars?

Thou wilt not see-see with their eagle-eyes before thee The world is drowned in infectious filth. Waitest thou thy last day?! And where the unworthy destruction was already looming - there came your cowardly flight in order, for you still guarded your moral stand, your backbone-preserving, moral stand. - Where are the bright, shining fires of joy that once lit the tangled lines of your clown-face, curved into tears?

Now only your pitying, self-indulgent bitterness pours out upon the world of which you are a part! Thy anguish, though - pretend not, who can see it? Is it creeping in on thee more and more urgently, and the beating mantle of thy truthful heart is threatened by the insidious interest: can all and all be bought?

To endure, to bear, but also to hope, The miserly miserly years may teach. Like the miserable vagabond, who with his bare hands dug himself out of the pit, and sued man if he had to, stubbornly and stubbornly, and still more fought his own fierce battle with himself; through a shower of falling sieves and words of interest he could survive the struggling calvary of his creation. And though you still often moan your piteous fate, which like weak iron now weighs you down, yet a hardy reality is straining against it. It will not yield to fall, as a satisfaction to the censor.

As long as thy organs and pump-heart endure, thou shalt rise from the mud-field, even if trampled upon!