Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/210

 Yes, plucked!—Phew! I'm plucked clean enough indeed. Well, well, I've a trifle still left in reserve; I've a little in America, a little in my pocket; So I won't be quite driven to beg my bread.— And at bottom this middle condition is best. I'm no longer a slave to my coachman and horses; I haven't to fret about postchaise or baggage; I am master, in short, of the situation.— What path should I choose? Many paths lie before me; And a wise man is known from a fool by his choice. My business life is a finished chapter; My love-sports, too, are a cast-off garment. I feel no desire to live back like a crab. "Forward or back, and it's just as far; Out or in, and it's just as strait,"— So I seem to have read in some luminous work.— I'll try something new, then; ennoble my course; Find a goal worth the labour and money it costs. Shall I write my life without dissimulation,— A book for guidance and imitation? Or, stay! I have plenty of time at command;— What if, as a travelling scientist, I should study past ages and time's voracity? Ay, sure enough, that is the thing for me! Legends I read e'en in childhood's days, And since then I've kept up that branch of learning.— I will follow the path of the human race! Like a feather I'll float on the stream of history Make it all live again, as in a dream,— See the heroes battling for truth and right,