Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 3).djvu/230

 I'll see just now if I can pitch My music to a higher note: Though with an unaccustom'd throat, A sounding-board's so seldom here. Farewell, farewell! I mean to preach Of human nature's sinful prime, God's image nigh obliterated.— But now I'm thinking it is time The inner mortal should be baited. [Goes.

[Stands for a moment as if petrified in thought.] All I have offer'd for my call, God's as I vainly held it,—all; And now one trumpet-blast reveal'd Before what idols I had kneel'd. Not yet! not yet! I'm not their slave! Yon churchyard has had blood to sup, Light, life I've laid in yonder grave;— My soul shall not be yielded up! O horrible to stand alone,— Amid a glimmering world of dead; Horrible to receive a stone, Howe'er I hunger after bread.—  How true, how deadly true, his strain,— But yet how vacant and how vain. Dim broods God's dove of piercing eyes; Alas, to me she never flies.— O, had I but one faithful breast— To give me strength, to give me rest. , pale, emaciated, dressed in black, comes along the road and stops on perceiving .

[Cries out.]

You, Einar?