Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/256

 throve, as many a cultivated patch
 * bore witness, bravely clad in waving gold.
 * At church he kept his right hand in his pocket,-
 * but sure I am at home his fingers nine
 * toiled every bit as hard as others' ten.-
 * One spring the torrent washed it all away.
 * Their lives were spared. Ruined and stripped of all,
 * he set to work to make another clearing;
 * and, ere the autumn, smoke again arose
 * from a new, better-sheltered, mountain farm-house.
 * Sheltered? From torrent-not from avalanche;
 * two years, and all beneath the snow lay buried.
 * But still the avalanche could not daunt his spirit.
 * He dug, and raked, and carted-cleared the ground-
 * and the next winter, ere the snow-blasts came,
 * a third time was his little homestead reared.
 * Three sons he had, three bright and stirring boys;
 * they must to school, and school was far away;-
 * and they must clamber where the hill-track failed,
 * by narrow ledges through the headlong scaur.
 * What did he do? The eldest had to manage
 * as best he might, and, where the path was worst,
 * his father cast a rope round him to stay him;-
 * the others on his back and arms he bore.
 * Thus he toiled, year by year, till they were men.
 * Now might he well have looked for some return.
 * In the New World, three prosperous gentlemen
 * their school-going and their father have forgotten.
 * He was short-sighted. Out beyond the circle
 * of those most near to him he nothing saw.