Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/431



Well, let us keep the simile you chose. Love is a flower; for if heaven's blessed rain Fall short, it all but pines to death—     [Pauses.

What then?

[with a gallant bow].

Then come the aunts with the reviving hose.— But poets have this simile employed, And men for scores of centuries enjoyed,— Yet hardly one its secret sense has hit; For flowers are manifold and infinite. Say, then, what flower is love? Name me, who knows, The flower most like it?

Why, it is the rose; Good gracious, that's exceedingly well known;— Love, all agree, lends life a rosy tone.

It is the snowdrop; growing, snow enfurled; Till it peer forth, undreamt of by the world.

It is the dandelion,—made robust By dint of human heel and horse hoof thrust; Nay, shooting forth afresh when it is smitten, As Pedersen so charmingly has written.