Explore "Madness" by Rainer Maria Rilke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.
The people watched with startled mien / And passed with frightened glance / For all know that only a Queen / May dance in the lanes: dance! .