This page needs to be proofread.
?
- Where are now the sacks of coin
- left behind by Rasmus Gynt?
- Ah, your father lent them wings,-
- lavished them abroad like sand,
- buying land in every parish,
- driving round in gilded chariots.
- Where is all the wealth he wasted
- at the famous winter-banquet,
- when each guest sent glass and bottle
- shivering 'gainst the wall behind him?
PEER
- Where's the snow of yester-year?
ASE
- Silence, boy, before your mother!
- See the farmhouse! Every second
- window-pane is stopped with clouts.
- Hedges, fences, all are down,
- beasts exposed to wind and weather,
- fields and meadows lying fallow,
- every month a new distraint-
PEER
- Come now, stop this old-wife's talk!
- Many a time has luck seemed dropping,
- and sprung up as high as ever!
ASE
- Salt-strewn is the soil it grew from.
- Lord, but you're a rare one, you,-
- just as pert and jaunty still,
- just as bold as when the pastor,
- newly come from Copenhagen,
- bade you tell your Christian name,
