Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (338 page)

LYRICS AND POEMS

I

BUILDING PLANS

I REMEMBER, as clearly as if it were last night,
The evening my first poem appeared in black and white.
I sat there in my den with the smoke clouds rolling free,
Sat smoking and sat dreaming in blest complacency.

I will build me a cloud castle. Two wings shall shape it forth;
A great one and a small one. It shall shine across the North.
The greater shall shelter a singer immortal;
The smaller to a maiden shall open its portal.

A noble symmetry methought shewed in my double wing;
But afterward there came a sad confusion in the thing.
The castle went crazy, as the master found his wits:
The great wing grew too little, and the small one fell to bits.

II

WHAT is life? a fighting
In heart and in brain with Trolls.
Poetry? that means writing
Doomsday-accounts of our souls.

III

A BIRD-BALLAD

ONE lovely day in springtime
We paced the avenue;
As some dark riddle draws one
The place forbidden drew.

The sky was blue above us;
The wind was in the west;
A bird sat singing in the limes
To young ones in the nest.

I painted poet-pictures
Of bright-hued fantasy;
Two brown eyes laughed and listened
And sparkled back at me.

A twitter and a titter —
O’erhead we heard it plain:
But we, we bade a sweet good-bye,
And never met again....

And when, alone and lonely,
I pace the avenue,
They leave me no peace nor quiet,
The little feathered crew.

We did not dream Dame Sparrow
Had spied on us, and soon
. She made a song about us
And put it to a tune.

Now every bird has caught it
That has a beak to sing;
The leaves are full of lays about
That shining day in spring.

IV

COMPLICATIONS

AN apple-tree in a garden grew;
A little bee in the garden flew.
The tree was snowing with bloom, and the bee
Fell in love with a blossom upon the tree.

Their peace of mind was lost to them both;
But the bee and the blossom plighted troth.

The bee flew wide on his summer trip;
When he turned, the flower was a greenling-hip.

The bee was sad, and the greenling too;
But there really was nothing that they could do.

Under the tree, in a wall, kept house
A poor but highly respectable mouse.

He sighed in secret: O greenling fine,
My hole were heaven, wert thou but mine!

The bee flew again, still true to his suit;
When home he turned, the hip was a fruit.

The bee was sad, and the apple too;
But there really was nothing that they could do.

Under the wall, in a crevice narrow,
There hung a nest, the home of a sparrow.

He sighed in secret: O apple fine,
My nest were heaven, wert thou but mine!

The bee it sorrowed, the apple sighed,
The mouse it suffered, the sparrow cried;

But nothing happened, and nobody knew;
There was absolutely nothing to do.

So the fruit just fell from the bough, and broke;
And the mouse fell dead ‘twixt a sigh and a choke;

And the sparrow, too, was found dead in the eaves,
When they put up the pole with the Christmas sheaves.

When the bee was free, every hedge was bare;
Not a bloom of the summer left anywhere.

So he entered the hive, and there found peace
In the beeswax trade, till his late decease.
Now of all this fuss there had been no need
Had the bee been a mouse when the flower went to seed;

And there might have been quite a nice ending to ‘t,
Had the mouse been a sparrow when the hip was a fruit.

V

WITH A WATER-LILY

SEE, dear, what thy lover brings;
‘Tis the flower with the white wings.
Buoyed upon the quiet stream
In the spring it lay a dream.

Homelike to bestow this guest,
Lodge it, dear one, in thy breast;
There its leaves the secret keep
Of a wave both still and deep.

Child, beware the tarn-fed stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though the sprite pretends to sleep,
And above the lilies peep.

Child, thy bosom is the stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though above the lilies peep,
And the sprite pretends to sleep.

Fearfully hiding
 
Thy song’s hushed spirit,
Didst thou pass gliding,
 
Nor let’st me hear it.

But, ere we parted,
 
Once
, eyes replied to me,
 
Lips vowed and lied to me,
And song upstarted;

‘Twas one brief quiring
 
And thy day gone then.
Thou sang’st expiring —
 
Thou
wast
a swan, then!

VII

GONE

THE last, late guest
 
To the gate we followed;
Good-bye — and the rest
 
The night-wind swallowed.

House, garden, street,
 
Lay tenfold gloomy,
Where accents sweet
 
Had made music to me.

It was but a feast
 
With the dark coming on;
She was but a guest, —
 
And now, she is gone.

VIII

WILDFLOWERS AND HOTHOUSE-PLANTS

“GOOD Heavens, man, what a freak of taste!
 
What blindness to form and feature!
The girl’s no beauty, and might be placed
 
As a hoydenish kind of creature.”

No doubt it were more in the current tone
 
And the tide to-day we move in,
If I could but choose me to make my own
 
A type of our average woman.

Like winter blossoms they all unfold
 
Their primly maturing glory;
Like pot-grown plants in the tepid mould
 
Of a window conservatory.

They sleep by rule and by rule they wake,
 
Each tendril is taught its duties;
Were I worldly-wise, yes, my choice I’d make
 
From our stock of average beauties.

For worldly wisdom what do I care?
 
 
I am sick of its prating mummers;
She breathes of the field and the open air,
 
And the fragrance of sixteen summers.

IX

MOUNTAIN LIFE

IN summer dusk the valley lies
With far-flung shadow-veil;
A cloud-sea laps the precipice
Before the evening gale:
The welter of the cloud-waves grey
Cuts off from keenest sight
The glacier, looking out by day
O’er all the district, far away,
And crowned with golden light.

But o’er the smouldering cloud-wrack’s flow,
Where gold and amber kiss,
Stands up the archipelago,
A home of shining peace.
The mountain eagle seems to sail
A ship far seen at even;
And over all a serried pale
Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail,
Fronts westward threatening heaven.

But look, a steading nestles, close
Beneath the ice-field’s bound,
Where purple cliffs and glittering snows
The quiet home surround.
Here place and people seem to be
A world apart, alone; —
Cut off from men by spate and scree,
It has a heaven more broad, more free,
A sunshine all its own.

Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays,
Half shadow, half aflame;
The deep, still vision of her gaze
Was never word to name.
She names it not herself, nor knows
What goal may be its will;
While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows
It bears her where the sunset glows,
Or, maybe, further still.

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds
Where close the glaciers jut;
Too soon the snowstorm’s cloak enfolds
Stone byre and pine-log hut.
Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze
The winter’s well-worn tasks; —
But spin thy wool with cheerful face:
One sunset in the mountains pays
For all their winter asks.

X

IN THE PICTURE GALLERY

WITH palette laden
 
She sat, as I passed her,
A dainty maiden
 
Before an Old Master.

What mountain-top is
 
She bent upon? Ah,
She neatly copies
 
Murillo’s Madonna.
But rapt and brimming
 
The eyes’ full chalice says
The heart builds dreaming
 
Its fairy-palaces.

* * * * *

The eighteenth year rolled
 
By, ere returning,
I greeted the dear old
 
Scenes with yearning.

With palette laden
 
She sat, as I passed her,
A faded maiden
 
Before an Old Master.

But what is she doing?
 
The same thing still — lo,
Hotly pursuing
 
That very Murillo!

Her wrist never falters;
 
It keeps her, that poor wrist,
With panels for altars
 
And daubs for the tourist.

And so she has painted
 
Through years unbrightened,
Till hopes have fainted
 
And hair has whitened.