Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/188

 look, here are ferns growing-edible roots.
 * [Eats a little.]
 * 'Twould be fitter food for an animal-
 * but the text says: Bridle the natural man!
 * Furthermore it is written: The proud shall be humbled,
 * and whoso abaseth himself, exalted.
 * [Uneasily.]
 * Exalted? Yes, that's what will happen with me;-
 * no other result can so much as be thought of.
 * Fate will assist me away from this place,
 * and arrange matters so that I get a fresh start.
 * This is only a trial; deliverance will follow,-
 * if only the Lord lets me keep my health.

[Dismisses his misgivings, lights a cigar, stretches himself, and gazes out over the desert.]
 * What an enormous, limitless waste!-
 * Far in the distance an ostrich is striding.-
 * What can one fancy was really God's
 * meaning in all of this voidness and deadness?
 * This desert, bereft of all sources of life;
 * this burnt-up cinder, that profits no one;
 * this patch of the world, that for ever lies fallow;
 * this corpse, that never, since earth's creation,
 * has brought its Maker so much as thanks,-
 * why was it created?-How spendthrift is Nature!-
 * Is that sea in the east there, that dazzling expanse
 * all gleaming? It can't be; 'tis but a mirage.
 * The sea's to the west; it lies piled up behind me,
 * dammed out from the desert by a sloping ridge.
 * [A thought flashes through his mind.]
 * Dammed out? Then I could-? The ridge is narrow.