Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/132

 spread your table and bring your food.
 * If you'd eat, my lad, you must help yourself,
 * fetch your rations raw from the wood and stream,
 * split your own fir-roots and light your own fire,
 * bustle around, and arrange and prepare things.
 * Would you clothe yourself warmly, you must stalk your deer;
 * would you found you a house, you must quarry the stones;
 * would you build up its walls, you must fell the logs,
 * and shoulder them all to the building-place.-
 * [His axe sinks down; he gazes straight in front of him.]
 * Brave shall the building be. Tower and vane
 * shall rise from the roof-tree, high and fair.
 * And then I will carve, for the knob on the gable,
 * a mermaid, shaped like a fish from the navel.
 * Brass shall there be on the vane and the door-locks.
 * Glass I must see and get hold of too.
 * Strangers, passing, shall ask amazed
 * what that is glittering far on the hillside.
 * [Laughs angrily.]
 * Devil's own lies! There they come again.
 * You're an outlaw, lad!
 * [Hewing vigorously.]
 * A bark-thatched hovel
 * is shelter enough both in rain and frost.
 * [Looks up at the tree.]
 * Now he stands wavering. There; only a kick,
 * and he topples and measures his length on the ground;-
 * the thick-