<p><SPAN name="THE_PARASITE" id="THE_PARASITE"></SPAN>THE PARASITE</p>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They brought to the little Princess, from her earliest hour of birth,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The lovely things, the beautiful things, the soft things of earth.</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They covered her floor with crimson, they wrapped her in eiderdown;</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They hung the windows with cloth of gold, lest her eyes look down;</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">(Lest the highway show an unlovely thing</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And her eyes look down.)</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They brought rare toys to her cradle, rich gems to her maidenhood;</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All that she saw was beautiful, all that she heard was good.</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When tumult rose in the city they bade her minstrels sing;</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They drowned with the sound of music a people's clamouring;</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">(Lest she turn and hark to the highway,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And hear an unlovely thing.)</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But there came a day of terror, when a cry too sharp and long</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tore through the streets of the city, through the soft, sweet song.</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She bade her singers be silent—silent they stood in awe;</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She raised the gold from the window; she looked down and saw.</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">(She leaned and looked on the highway,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She looked down and saw.)</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She saw men driven like cattle, she heard the woman's cry,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She saw the white-faced children toil, and the weaklings die.</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She saw the bound and the beaten beneath her like shifting sands,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And—she dropped the cloth on her window with her own white hands,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">(She shut out her people's crying</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With her own white hands.)</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As a child may turn from a picture that he may not understand,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She turned to fragrance and music,—to soft things and bland.</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>If the Princess is blind to anguish, if the Princess is deaf to woe,</i></span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>If the streets of her city may run with blood, and she not know,</i></span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Now theirs is the blame who have closed her in ease as in folded wings,</i></span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Who have barred the doors and windows, what time her minstrel sings,</i></span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Lest her eyes look down on the highway,</i></span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>And look on unlovely things.</i></span><br/>
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