Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/400

 [''lifting her head after a brief silence, looking at him and drawing nearer''].

Now I will recompense your kind intent To save me, with an earnest admonition. That falcon-image gave me sudden vision What your "emancipation" really meant. You said you were the falcon, that must fight Athwart the wind if it would reach the sky, I was the breeze you must be breasted by, Else vain were all your faculty of flight; How pitifully mean! How paltry! Nay How ludicrous, as you yourself divined! That seed, however, fell not by the way, But bred another fancy in my mind Of a far more illuminating kind. You, as I saw it, were no falcon, but A tuneful dragon, out of paper cut, Whose Ego holds a secondary station, Dependent on the string for animation; Its breast was scrawled with promises to pay In cash poetic,—at some future day; The wings were stiff with barbs and shafts of wit That wildly beat the air, but never hit; The tail was a satiric rod in pickle To castigate the town's infirmities, But all it compass'd was to lightly tickle The casual doer of some small amiss. So you lay helpless at my feet, imploring: "O raise me, how and where is all the same! Give me the power of singing and of soaring. No matter at what cost of bitter blame!"

[clenching his fists in inward agitation].

Heaven be my witness—!