GOLDFINCHES AT R^'MK INTRINSICA 231 



it was my fate to leave my home Ijeforc completing 

 my seventeenth year, at the will of others, to be a wife. 

 He who took mc was amiable and more than kind to 

 me. Like a brother, a friend, a passionate lover, he 

 protects, he honours, he worships me, and in his house 

 my will is law. But I have no pleasure in it. His de- 

 votion, his gifts, are like mine to you, when I am 

 carried away by the charm of your beauty and melody, 

 when I call you my sweet little one, and you come to 

 my call to bite me caressingly with your little beak 

 and flutter your black and yellow wings as if to em- 

 brace me; when in my ardour I take you tenderly in 

 my hands to hold you to my heaving breast and wish 

 and wish that in kissing you I could breathe into you 

 my very life! 



Even so does my owner with me: when in the de- 

 lirium of passion he strains me to him, when he showers 

 gold and gems and all beautiful gifts on me, and seeks 

 after every imaginable pleasure for my delight, and 

 would give his very life for me — his mistress, bride and 

 queen, who is more than all the world to him. In vain 

 — in vain ! Here in my heart there is a voice which 

 asks me: Does it delight you? Does it sweeten your 

 captivity? Oh, no. no, his benefits do but increase this 

 secret eternal bitterness! 



Even so do you, oh, my little bird, reward me for 

 all my love and tenderness and blame me with those 

 painfully sharp notes for this tasteless life to which you 

 are doomed ; even so do you cry for your lost liberty, 

 and open and flutter your wings with the desire to fly. 



