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quiet and deadly pale].
- One that's remembered,-and one that's forgot.
- One that has squandered,-and one that has saved.-
- Oh, earnest!-and never can the game be played o'er!
- Oh, dread!-here was my Kaiserdom!
- [Hurries off along the wood path.]
SCENE SIXTH
[Night. A heath, with fir-trees. A forest fire has been raging; charred tree-trunks are seen stretching for miles. White mists here and there clinging to the earth.] [PEER GYNT comes running over the heath.] PEER
- Ashes, fog-scuds, dust wind-driven,-
- here's enough for building with!
- Stench and rottenness within it;
- all a whited sepulchre.
- Figments, dreams, and still-born knowledge
- lay the pyramid's foundation;
- o'er them shall the work mount upwards,
- with its step on step of falsehood.
- Earnest shunned, repentance dreaded,
- flaunt at the apex like a scutcheon,
- fill the trump of judgment with their:
- Petrus Gyntus Caesar fecit!
- [Listens.]
- What is this, like children's weeping?
- Weeping, but half-way to song
