Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/172

 PEER
 * O'er all the world.

MONSIEUR BALLON
 * But how, friend-?

PEER By the might of gold!
 * That plan is not at all a new one;
 * it's been the soul of my career.
 * Even as a boy, I swept in dreams
 * far o'er the ocean on a cloud.
 * I soared with train and golden scabbard,-
 * and flopped down on all-fours again.
 * But still my goal, my friends, stood fast.-
 * There is a text, or else a saying,
 * somewhere, I don't remember where,
 * that if you gained the whole wide world,
 * but lost yourself, your gain were but
 * a garland on a cloven skull.
 * That is the text-or something like it;
 * and that remark is sober truth.

VON EBERKOPF
 * But what then is the Gyntish Self?

PEER
 * The world behind my forehead's arch,
 * in force of which I'm no one else
 * than I, no more than God's the Devil.

TRUMPETERSTRALE
 * I understand now where you're aiming!

MONSIEUR BALLON
 * Thinker sublime!

VON EB