Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/391

 Far as the eye can travel, all is drought, And nowhere peeps one spray of verdure out!

[ comes out on to the verandah with a flowering rose-tree which she sets down.

Yes one—yes one—!

Falk, in the dark?

And fearless! Darkness to me is fair, and light is cheerless But are not you afraid in yonder walls Where the lamp's light on sallow corpses falls—

Shame!

[looking after who appears at the window].

He was once so brilliant and so strong; Warred with the world to win his mistress; passed For Custom's doughtiest iconoclast; And poured forth love in pæans of glad song—! Look at him now! In solemn robes and wraps, A two-legged drama on his own collapse!