The whole world crushes me with its weight,
And lies upon me as sand lies in the wilderness.
Still do I live.
My body is the coffin of my spirit
And my spirit is the sepulchre of my body.
What is life to me?
I am destroyed before I have died the death.
The missile shunned me,
And the slaying sword turned aside from me;
Fire shrank from mowing me down,
And the eyes of hostile armies beheld me not.
Life has not acknowledged me as its son,
And Death has turned its embrace from me.
The grave has fled before me.
Only causeless grief holds me,
Has clutched me in its fetters and hounds me with its whip.
Mute, not showing me the path, it drives me
I know not whither.
Darkness. A group of disabled soldiers who are returning is outlined more and more clearly beside a fire.
First Disabled Soldier:
Well, have none of you got any tobacco? Not a plug? Not a shred? Not a flake?
Second Disabled Soldier:
No, that we haven’t.
First Disabled Soldier:
Bah! that’s bad. It’s no pleasure puffing out of an empty pipe.
