Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/208

 ne.-
 * What tempted me into that galley at all?
 * It's best, in the long run, to live as a Christian,
 * to put away peacock-like ostentation,
 * to base all one's dealings on law and morality,
 * to be ever oneself, and to earn at the last
 * speech at one's grave-side, and wreaths on one's coffin.
 * [Walks a few steps.]
 * The hussy;-she was on the very verge
 * of turning my head clean topsy-turvy.
 * May I be a troll if I understand
 * what it was that dazed and bemused me so.
 * Well; it's well that's done: had the joke been carried
 * but one step on, I'd have looked absurd.-
 * I have erred;-but at least it's a consolation
 * that my error was due to the false situation.
 * It wasn't my personal self that fell.
 * 'Twas in fact this prophetical way of life,
 * so utterly lacking the salt of activity,
 * that took its revenge in these qualms of bad taste.
 * It's a sorry business this prophetising!
 * One's office compels one to walk in a mist;
 * in playing the prophet, you throw up the game
 * the moment you act like a rational being.
 * In so far I've done what the occasion demanded,
 * in the mere fact of paying my court to that goose.
 * But, nevertheless-
 * [Bursts out laughing.]
 * Hm, to think of it now!
 * To try to make time stop by jigging and dancing,
 * and to cope with the current by capering and prancing!
 * To thrum on the lute-strings, to fondle and sigh,
 * and end, like a rooster,-by getting well plucked!
 * Such conduct is truly prophetic frenzy.-