Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 3).djvu/87

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Brand.


[Nodding slowly.]


To strew it.

His Mother.

             Strew it! If you do,
It is my soul that you will strew!

Brand.

And if I do it, even so?
If I one evening vigil keep
With lighted taper by your bed,
While you with clasped Psalter sleep
The first night's slumber of the dead,—
If I then fumble round about,
Draw treasure after treasure out,
Take up the taper, hold it low—?

His Mother.


[Approaching excitedly.]


Whence comes this fancy?

Brand.

                         Would you know?

His Mother.

Ay.

Brand.

    From a childish scene that still
Lives in my mind, and ever will,
That seams my soul with foul device
Like an infestering cicatrice.
It was an autumn evening. Dead
Was father; you lay sick in bed.
I stole where he was laid by night,
All pallid in the silver light.