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.
