Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/431

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Falk.

Well, let us keep the simile you chose.
Love is a flower; for if heaven's blessed rain
Fall short, it all but pines to death— [Pauses.

Miss Jay.

                                          What then?

Falk [with a gallant bow].

Then come the aunts with the reviving hose.—
But poets have this simile employed,
And men for scores of centuries enjoyed,—
Yet hardly one its secret sense has hit;
For flowers are manifold and infinite.
Say, then, what flower is love? Name me, who knows,
The flower most like it?

Miss Jay.

                           Why, it is the rose;
Good gracious, that's exceedingly well known;—
Love, all agree, lends life a rosy tone.

A Young Lady.

It is the snowdrop; growing, snow enfurled;
Till it peer forth, undreamt of by the world.

An Aunt.

It is the dandelion,—made robust
By dint of human heel and horse hoof thrust;
Nay, shooting forth afresh when it is smitten,
As Pedersen so charmingly has written.