Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (342 page)

Teach them in my school new-founded;
 
Wean from thoughts of gloom with laughter;
Soon a life on glacier-bounded
 
Fells shall seem not strange thereafter.

VII

Week by week I sit and brood;
 
Memory’s voice is all too strong for
One made sick by solitude;
 
Down I must, to those I long for!

One short day, then climb again
 
From their kisses, hers and mother’s,
To my kingdom, where shall reign
 
In the spring with me two others.

Out I must!... Ha, driving snow!
 
Something late I made my vow...
O’er the fell the storm sweeps low;
 
All the paths are snow-bound now.

VIII

Weeks went by and I won my ground;
 
Home yearnings grew weak and died;
The streams in a shroud of ice were wound;
O’er the curve of the snow-field the moon hung round,
 
And the stars were magnified.

I was too youngblooded to sit and mope
 
In the hut as day would wane;
My thoughts and I must have room and scope;
O’er the fells I coursed, till checked by the slope
 
Of the treacherous moraine.

No sound from the vale’s deep gloom I hear:
 
Yes,
one
floats up to the fells!
I listen: it rings both soft and clear:
Where fell that cadence last on my ear?
 
Then I recognise church-bells.

They ring in the Christmas festival,
 
With the same old home-like clamour;
There’s a square of light in my neighbour’s wall,
And the beams from my mother’s cot that fall
 
Entice me with some strange glamour.

The old home life, with its poor estate,
 
Becomes an heroic song; —
Up here are the fells, austere and great;
Down there my bride and my mother wait,
 
And for them I needs must long.

Then I caught a short dry laugh from behind,
 
The stranger’s, and there stood he;
He had heard the thought ere it left my mind:
My youthful friend is quite touched, I find;
 
Ah yes, the old home, I see!

And once more I stand with an arm like steel,
 
And know my strength to endure;
The fell’s chill breath in my breast I feel;
It shall throb no more at a Christmas peal;
 
It is proof against the lure.

Then down by my mother’s roof began
 
A curious light to glow;
‘Twas first like a winter daybreak wan;
Then smoke-clouds poured, and the red flame ran,
 
And the house was all in a low.

It flamed, it fell, in a flash was not:
 
I shrieked in the moonlight pale.
But the hunter consoled me,
Why so hot?
It made a fine blaze, did the poor old cot,
 
With the cat and the Christmas ale.

He talked so glibly in my despair
 
That scarce a shudder I checked:
But he pointed out what a contrast rare
The moonlight made with the fire’s red glare:
 
‘Twas a wonderful effect.

He peered through his hollowed hand below
 
To get the perspective right;
While floated singing over the snow
A flight of angels — I heard them go
 
With my mother’s soul through the night.

“Quiet thou wentest thy ways in the throng,
 
Quiet hast sorrowed and striven;
Over the mountains, swift and strong,
Lightly we lift thee to joyance and song,
 
To keep thy Christmas in heaven!”

Gone was the hunter, the moon was dead,
 
I strode o’er the fell, droop-necked.
My blood was freezing or molten lead;
But that contrast in lighting, it must be said,
 
‘Twas a wonderful effect!

IX

The heath danced hot to the summer’s prime;
 
The highroad was thronged with people,
The air was full of a wedding chime,
And down in the valley they rode in time
 
To the tune from the little steeple.

My neighbour’s gate was with birch boughs gay
 
The yard was packed as you please;
They were firing guns where he leads his hay;
I laughed, where out on the brink I lay,
 
While hot tears dried in the breeze.

I seemed to hear mocking laughter ring,
 
Ironical ditties sung,
That drove in my face with a spiteful fling;
I lay on the outmost edge; in the ling
 
I scrabbled, and bit my tongue.

They rode from the farm in marshalled ranks;
 
She sat there erect, the bride;
Her hair streamed down to the horse’s flanks,
It shone — and I found it familiar, thanks
 
To that last dim hour at her side.

Bridegroom and bride, the brook they passed
 
Riding closely, he and she;.
With that, I had grieved my heart free at last;
The struggle was over, the die was cast,
 
I had no more dole to dree.

High over that summer-life did I stand,
 
Self-steeled, on the brink of the height;
The procession drew past like a silken band;
I held to my eye my hollowed hand
 
To get the perspective right.

The fluttering snoods, the linen fine,
 
The men in their jackets red,
The church with the consecrated wine,
The bride, so lovely, who once was mine,
 
And the joy that for me was dead, —

All, all I saw, as I looked again
 
 
From above life’s line of snow;
‘Twas mine a higher light to attain....
But folk who herd down there in the plain
 
Of course cannot see it so.

Then I heard a short dry laugh from behind,
 
The stranger’s, and there stood he:
My friend, from your last remarks I find
In vain my wallet was strapped and lined.
 
You have no more need of me.

No, now I can help myself, like a man;
 
But thanks for your friendly action.
Parched are the veins where a flood-tide ran,
And I surely find, when my heart I scan,
 
All symptoms of petrifaction.

I drained the strengthening draught, nor checked;
 
No more, on the fells, I freeze.
My life is broken, my bark is wrecked —
But look, — her dress! what a fine effect,
 
Seen red through the white birch-trees!

They are galloping off; see, they disappear
 
Round the curve by the church-yard wall...
Live happy, thou memory fair and dear!
I have sung my very last song, to clear
 
A higher view of it all.

Now I am steel; for the hills I am shod;
 
To the mountain-call I rally!
The last of my lowland path is trod;
Up here on the fells must be freedom and God,
 
Men do but grope, in the valley.

Original written 1859-60. Translation printed from revised MS.

XXVII

TO MY FRIEND THE REVOLUTIONARY ORATOR

THEY say I’m becoming conservative;
No; still in my life-long creed I live.

Your changing pawns is a futile plan;
Make a sweep of the chess-board, and I’m your man.

Was never but one revolution unfaltering
That was not marred by half-hearted paltering.

To that, all since were but idle menaces.
I allude, of course, to the Deluge in Genesis.

Yet Lucifer tripped, even then; by a later ship
Came Noah, you remember, and seized the dictatorship.

Let us go, next time, to the root of the matter.
It needs men to act as well as to chatter.

You deluge the world to its topmost mark;
With pleasure I will torpedo the Ark.

Original written 1869. Translation printed from the W
estminster Gazette
of June 17, 1903.

XXVIII

TERJE VIGEN

THERE dwelt a lone man, grizzled and weird,
 
On the bare isle furthest out.
He never did aught that should make him feared,
 
Afloat or the coast about;
Yet at times in his eye a hard light blazed, —
 
Most when the sea ran high, —
And then folk fancied the man was crazed,
And there were few that unfearing gazed
 
In Terje Vigen’s eye.

He was old when I saw him once: his craft
 
With fish lay moored by the quay;
His hair was white, but he sang and laughed,
 
And brisk as a boy was he.
He’d a jest for each young lass on the beach,
 
With the bairns he was full of fun;
He sprang aboard and waved them a cheer,
Then hoisted foresail, for home to steer,
 
The old sea-hawk, in the sun.

I

THE BLOCKADE RUNNER

Now this is the story of what befell
 
That in Terje wrought such change.
I heard it from men who knew him well,
 
And the tale is as true as strange.
He went as a child to sea, and wild
And hard was the youth he had;
He hungered at last for his native place,
But none at home knew the young man’s face
 
Who had sailed as a little lad.

Now was he comely and big of growth,
 
With a look that friends might win;
But dead were father and mother both,
 
And belike the whole of his kin.
He grieved a day, or mayhappen two;
 
Then he shook his broad shoulders free.
With land beneath him no rest he knew;
Nay, better make his home on the blue,
 
On the vast and billowy sea!

A twelvemonth afterward Terje wed.
 
The wooing was short and sweet.
He rued the conquest, or so folk said,
 
That fettered his roving feet.
But the sailor stayed by his own fireside,
 
One winter, with gay carouse.
The windows, polished with careful pride,
Showed flower-pots, and curtains neatly tied
 
In the little red-painted house.

When the ice was loosed and the thaw-wind blew,
 
Then Terje sailed with the smack;
In autumn, when southward the wild geese flew,
 
He met them in cruising back.