Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 3).djvu/118



Give me a watchword.

Stern?

No, mild.

[Clasping her.]

The blameless shall not taste the grave.

[Looking brightly up at him.]

Then one is ours God may not crave!

[Goes into the house.

[Looking fixedly before him.]

But if he might? What "Isaac's Fear" Once ventured, He may venture here.

[Shakes off the thought.]

No, no, my sacrifice is made, The calling of my life gainsaid— Like the Lord's thunder to go forth And rouse the sleepers of the earth. Sacrifice! Liar! there was none! I miss'd it when my Dream was done, When Agnes woke me—and follow'd free To labour in the gloom with me.

[Looks along the road.]

Why tarries still the dying call, Her word, that she will offer all, That she has won that which uproots Sin's deepest fibres, rankest shoots! See there! No, it is but the Mayor, Well-meaning, brisk, and debonnaire,