Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (87 page)

EINAR.
Ay, it was there on those loved faces
Even but now we look’d our last,
And with clasp’d hands, kisses, embraces
Seal’d all our tender memories fast!
Come down to us, and I will tell
How God’s been good beyond compare —
And you shall all our gladness share
Pooh, stand not like an icicle!
Come, thaw now! There, I like you so.
First, I’m a painter, you must know,
And even this to me was sweet, —
To lend my fancy wings and feet,
In colours to bid life arise,
As He of grubs breeds butterflies.
But God surpass’d himself when He
My Agnes gave me for my bride!
I came from travels over sea,
My painter’s satchel at my side —

AGNES.
[Eagerly.]
Glad as a king, and fresh, and free, —
And knew a thousand songs beside!

EINAR.
Just as the village I pass’d through,
She chanced to dwell an inmate there.
S h e longed to taste the upland air,
The scented woods, the sun, the dew;
M e God unto the mountains drew, —
My heart cried out: Seek Beauty’s might
In forests dim and rivers bright
And flying clouds beneath the blue. —
Then I achieved my height of art:
A rosy flush upon her cheek,
Two joyous eyes that seem’d to speak,
A smile whose music filled the heart —

AGNES.
For you, though, all that art was vain,
You drank life’s beaker, blind and rapt,
And then, one sunny morn, again
Stood, staff in hand and baggage strapp’d —

EINAR.
Then suddenly the thought oecurr’d:
“Why, friend, the wooing is forgot!”
Hurrah! I ask’d, she gave her word,
And all was settled on the spot.
Our good old doctor, like a boy,
Was all beside himself with joy;
So three whole days, and whole nights three,
Held revelry for her and me;
Mayor and constable, clerk and priest, —
All the grown youth was at the feast.
Last night we left, but not for that
The revel or the banquet ceased;
With banner’d pole and wreathed hat,
Up over bank, on over brae,
Our comrades brought us on our way.

AGNES.
The mountain-side we danced along,
In couples now, and now in groups, —

EINAR.
Drank luscious wine from silver stoups, —

AGNES.
Awoke the summer night with song, —

EINAR.
And the thick mist before our feet
Beat an obsequious retreat.

BRAND.
And now your way lies — ?

EINAR.
To the town
Before us.

AGNES.
To my parents’ home.

EINAR.
First over yonder peak, then down
To the fjord haven in the west;
On Egir’s courser through the foam
Ride homeward to the bridal feast, —
So to the sunny south together
Like paired swans in their first flight —

BRAND.
And there — ?

EINAR.
A life of summer weather,
A dream, a legend of delight.
For on this Sabbath morn have we,
High on the hills, without a priest,
From fear and sorrow been released
And consecrated to gaiety.

BRAND.
By whom?

EINAR.
By all the merry crowd.
With ringing glasses every cloud
Was banish’d that might dash the leaves
Too rudely at our cottage caves.
Out of our speech they put to flight
Each warning word of stormy showers,
And hail’d us, garlanded with flowers,
The true-born children of Delight.

BRAND.
[Going.]
Farewell, ye two.

EINAR.
[Starting and looking more closely at him.]
I pray you, hold!
Something familiar in your face —

BRAND.
[Coldly.]
I am a stranger.

EINAR.
Yet a trace
Surely there lingers of an old
Friend of my school-days —

BRAND.
School-friends, true;
But now I am no more a boy.

EINAR.
Can it be?
[Cries out suddenly.]
Brand! It is! O joy!

BRAND.
From the first moment I knew y o u.

EINAR.
Well met! a thousand times well met!
Look at me!-Ay, the old Brand yet,
Still centred on the things within,
Whom never any one could win
To join our gambols.

BRAND.
You forget
That I was homeless and alone.
Yet you at least I loved, I own.
You children of the southern land
Were fashion’d of another clay
Than I, born by a rocky strand
In shadow of a barren brae.

EINAR.
Your home is here, I think?

BRAND.
My way
Lies past it.

EINAR.
Past? What, further?

BRAND.
Far
Beyond, beyond my home.

EINAR.
You are
A priest?

BRAND.
[Smiling.]
A mission-preacher, say.
I wander like the woodland hare,
And where I am, my home is there.

EINAR.
And whither is your last resort?

BRAND.
[Sternly and quickly.]
Inquire not!

EINAR.
Wherefore?

BRAND.
[Changing his tone.]
Ah,-then know,
The ship that stays for you below
Shall bear me also from the port.

EINAR.
Hurrah! My bridal-courser true!
Think, Agnes, he is coming too!

BRAND.
But I am to a burial bound.

AGNES.
A burial.

EINAR.
You? Why, who is dead?

BRAND.
The God who was your God, you said.

AGNES.
[Shrinking back.]
Come, Einar!

EINAR.
Brand!

BRAND.
With cerements wound
The God of each mechanic slave,
Of each dull drudger, shall be laid
By broad day in his open grave.
End of the matter must be made;
And high time is it you should know
He aird a thousand years ago.

EINAR.
Brand, you are ill!

BRAND.
No, sound and fresh
As juniper and mountain-pine!
It is our age whose pining flesh
Craves burial at these hands of mine.
Ye will but laugh and love and play,
A little doctrine take on trust,
And all the bitter burden thrust
On One who came, ye have been told,
And from your shoulders took away
Your great transgressions manifold.
He bore for you the cross, the lance —
Ye therefore have full leave to dance;
Dance then,-but where your dancing ends
Is quite another thing, my friends!

EINAR.
Ah, I perceive, the latest cry,
That folks are so much taken by.
You come of the new brood, who hold
That life is only gilded mould,
And with God’s penal fires and flashes
Hound all the world to sack and ashes.

BRAND.
No, I am no “Evangelist,”
I speak not as the Church’s priest:
That I’m a Christian, even, I doubt;
That I’m a man, though. I know well,
And that I see the cancer fell
That eats our country’s marrow out.

EINAR.
[Smiling.]
I never heard, I must confess.
Our country taxed with being given
To worldly pleasure in excess!

BRAND.
No, by delight no breast is riven; —
Were it but so, the ill were less!
Be passion’s slave, be pleasure’s thrall, —
But be it utterly, all in all
Be not to-day, to-morrow, one,
Another when a year is gone;
Be what you arc with all your heart,
And not by pieces and in part.
The Bacchant’s clear, defined, complete,
The sot, his sordid counterfeit;
Silenus charms; but all his graces
The drunkard’s parody debases.
Traverse the land from beach to beach,
Try every man in heart and soul,
You’ll find he has no virtue whole,
But just a little grain of each.
A little pious in the pew,
A little grave,-his fathers’ way, —
Over the cup a little gay, —
It was his father’s fashion too!
A little warm when glasses clash,
And stormy cheer and song go round
For the small Folk, rock-will’d, rock-bound,
That never stood the scourge and lash.
A little free in promise-making;
And then, when vows in liquor will’d
Must be in mortal stress fulfill’d,
A little fine in promise-breaking.
Yet, as I say, all fragments still,
His faults, his merits, fragments all,
Partial in good, partial in ill,
Partial in great things and in small; —
But here’s the grief-that, worst or best,
Each fragment of him wrecks the rest!

EINAR.
Scoffing’s an easy task: it were
A nobler policy to spare

BRAND.
Perhaps, if it were wholesome too.

EINAR.
Well, well, the indictment I endorse
With all my heart; but can’t divine
What in the world it has to do
With Him, the God you count a corse,
Whom yet I still acknowledge mine.

BRAND.
My genial friend, your gift is Art; —
Show me the God you have averr’d.
Him you have painted, I have heard,
And touch’d the honest people’s heart.
Old is he haply; am I right?

EINAR.
Well, yes —

BRAND.
Of course; and, doubtless, white?
Hairs straggling on a reverend head,
A beard of ice or silver-thread;
Kindly, yet stern enough to fright
A pack of children in the night.
I will not ask you, if your God
With fireside slippers you have shod;
But ‘twere a pity, without doubt,
To leave skull-cap and glasses out.

EINAR.
[Angrily.]
What do you mean?

BRAND.
I do not flout;
Just so he looks in form and face,
The household idol of our race.
As Catholics make of the Redeemer
A baby at the breast, so ye
Make God a dotard and a dreamer,
Verging on second infancy.
And as the Pope on Peter’s throne
Calls little but his keys his own,
So to the Church you would confine
The world-wide realm of the Divine;
‘Twixt Life and Doctrine set a sea,
Nowise concern yourselves to b e ;
Bliss for your souls ye would receive,
Not utterly and wholly l i v e ;
Ye need, such feebleness to brook,
A God who’ll through his fingers look,
Who, like yourselves, is hoary grown,
And keeps a cap for his bald crown.
Mine is another kind of God!
Mine is a storm, where thine’s a lull,
Implacable where thine’s a clod,
All-loving there, where thine is dull;
And He is young like Hercules,
No hoary sipper of life’s lees!
His voice rang through the dazzled night
When He, within the burning wood,
By Moses upon Horeb’s height
As by a pigmy’s pigmy stood.
In Gibeon’s vale He stay’d the sun,
And wonders without end has done,
And wonders without end would do,
Were not the age grown sick,-like you!

EINAR.
[Smiling faintly.]
And now the age shall be made whole?

BRAND.
It shall, I say, and that as sure
As that I came to earth to cure
The sapping fester of its soul.

EINAR.
[Shaking his head.]
Ere yet the radiant torchlight blazes,
Throw not the taper to the ground!
Nor blot the antiquated phrases
Before the great new words be found!

BRAND.
Nothing that’s new do I demand;
For Everlasting Right I stand.
It is not for a Church I cry,
It is not dogmas I defend;
Day dawn’d on both, and, possibly,
Day may on both of them descend.
What’s made has “finis” for its brand;
Of moth and worm it feels the flaw,
And then, by nature and by law,
Is for an embryo thrust aside.
But there is one that shall abide; —
The Spirit, that was never born,
That in the world’s fresh gladsome Morn
Was rescued when it seem’d forlorn,
That built with valiant faith a road
Whereby from Flesh it climb’d to God.
Nov but in shreds and scraps is dealt
The Spirit we have faintly felt;
But from these scraps and from these shreds,
These headless hands and handless heads,
These torso-stumps of soul and thought,
A Man complete and whole shall grow,
And God His glorious child shall know,
His heir, the Adam that He wrought!

EINAR.
[Breaking of]
Farewell. I judge that it were best
We parted.

BRAND.
You are going west, I northward.
To the fjord from here
Two pathways lead,-both alike near.
Farewell!

EINAR.
Farewell.

BRAND.
[Turning round again.]
Light learn to part
From vapour.-know that
Life’s an art!

EINAR.
[Waving him off]
Go, turn the universe upside down;
Still in my ancient God I trust!

BRAND.
Good; paint his crutches and his crown, —
I go to lay him in the dust!
[Disappears over the pass.]

[EINAR goes silently to the edge and looks after him.]