Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/209

 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,
 * as