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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

HENRIK IBSEN

VOLUME III

BRAND

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

HENRIK IBSEN

Copyright Edition. Complete in 12 Volumes.

Crown 8vo, price 4s. each.

ENTIRELY REVISED AND EDITED BY

WILLIAM ARCHER

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

21 Bedford Street, W.C.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN

Copyright Edition

VOLUME III

BRAND

TRANSLATED AND WITH INTRODUCTION BY

C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D., M.A.

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1912

First printed (small 4to, 7s 6d) January 1894

New Impressions October 1898, March 1903

COLLECTED EDITION

First printed November 1906

New Impressions December 1908, May 1912

Copyright 1894 by William Heinemann

CONTENTS

BRAND.

INTRODUCTION.[^[1]]

Brand was written in the summer of 1865, at Ariccia, near Rome. Fifteen months before, Ibsen had left Christiania, a voluntary exile, eager to escape from the narrow Scandinavian world, and burning with the sense of national disgrace.[disgrace.] Denmark was in the throes of the heroic but hopeless struggle to which her northern kinsmen had sent only a handful of volunteers. He had travelled southward, almost within hearing of the Prussian guns; and among the passengers on the steamer was that venerable silver-haired mother who, as his sarcastic verses tell, believed so firmly in the safety of her soldier-son, and with such good ground, “for he was a Norwegian soldier.”[^[2]] On arriving at Rome he turned resolutely away from these rankling memories, broke all the bonds that tied him to his country, plunged into the study of the ancient world, and made preparation for that colossal drama on the Emperor Julian which eight years later saw the light.

But the genius of the North held him in too strong a grip. “Never have I seen the Home and its life so fully, so clearly, so near by,” he told the Christiania students in 1873, “as precisely from a distance and in absence.”[^[3]] Under the Italian sky, among the myrtles and aloes of the “Paradise of exiles,” there rose before him more vividly than ever the vision of the stern and rugged Norwegian landscape, the solemn twilight of the fjord, the storm-swept glacier, the peasant-folk absorbed in the desperate struggle for bread, officialdom absorbed in material progress, “intelligence” growing refined, “humane,” and somewhat effeminate; and, emerging here and there, glimpses somewhat futile and forlorn of heroic manhood. A summer tour which he had made among the western fjords in July 1862, on a commission from Government to collect popular legends, supplied a crowd of vivid local and personal reminiscences; a ruined parsonage under a precipice, a little mouldering church, a wild march across Jotunheim in storm and snow, and then the dizzy plunge down into one of those deep lowland valleys that strike up like huge rocky rifts from the fjord-head into the heart of the mountains. A few months of intense labour sufficed to organise these scattered images into a moving world of drama, penetrated through and through with Ibsen’s individuality, and clothed in rich and many-coloured poetry. He had as yet written nothing at once so original, so kindling, and so profusely strewn with the most provocative brilliances of style; nothing which, with all its fierce invective against Norway, was so profoundly and intimately Norwegian in colouring and in spirit. Upon its publication, on March 15, 1866, at Copenhagen, the whole Scandinavian world was taken by storm.

The sale was from the outset immense, and has continued, though at a diminished pace, till the present day. Four editions appeared before the close of 1866; the eleventh in 1889. Ibsen was little accustomed to such success. It is said that immediately after the publication his sister-in-law drank to the “tenth edition”; the poet confidently shook his head and declared that the profits of the tenth edition should be hers. She took him at his word, and has not repented her prophetic gift.[^[4]] Outside Scandinavia, too, the name of the author of Brand rapidly became famous. It was the beginning of his European fame. In Germany, its intellectual suggestiveness and philosophical mysticism were keenly appreciated; it was compared with Hamlet and with Faust. No less than four translations appeared there between 1872 and 1882.

Even on the stage, for which it was never meant, Brand has not been quite unknown. In Christiania the Fourth Act has repeatedly been played; but it was reserved for the Director of the New Theatre at Stockholm, L. Josephson, to undertake the bold experiment of performing the whole. On March 24, 1885, a crowded house sat through a performance which lasted from 6.30 to 1.15. It was repeated fifteen times.[^[5]]

In 1893 a single performance of the Fourth Act, in the present version, was given in London.

Together with its still more splendid and various, yet completely dissimilar successor, Peer Gynt, Brand marks an epoch in Scandinavian literature. A large majority of those who know the original believe that it marks an epoch in the literature of Europe. Nothing in English literature in the least resembles a work, which is nevertheless peculiarly fitted to impress and to fascinate the English nature.[^[6]] But those who can imagine the prophetic fire of Carlyle fused with the genial verve and the intellectual athleticism of Browning, and expressed by aid of a dramatic faculty to parallel which we must go two centuries backward, may in some degree understand that fascination.

Primarily, however, Brand was addressed to Norway and to Norway alone. It was the passionate cry—at once invective and appeal—of a Norwegian, to the mother-country, of which, grievous as her failings are, he cannot bring himself to despair. The situation must be recalled. When the Danish King, in November 1863, supported by the King of Sweden, declared Slesvig an integral part of Denmark, there was much loud jubilation in Norway at the extension of “Scandinavian” rule, even among people not at all prepared to allow that the cause of Denmark and of Norway were one; while the more ardent spirits pledged themselves over flowing cups to support their “brothers” in the field. The actual invasion of Denmark by Prussia and Austria which followed (February 1864) was, in Ibsen’s eyes for his own country too, a moral crisis which could be manfully met only in one way; and when the Storthing, by virtually refusing war,[^[7]] forced the King, to his bitter shame, to leave Denmark to her fate, Ibsen’s heroic scorn broke into flame, and found its fiercest and keenest expression in the invectives of his hero, Brand.

Brand was no doubt originally intended to be simply an embodiment of Ibsen’s own heroic ideal of character. He is represented as a priest of modern Norway. But Ibsen has himself declared that this was not at all essential for his purpose. “I could have applied the whole syllogism just as well,” he told Georg Brandes, “to a sculptor, or a politician, as to a priest. I could quite as well have worked out the impulse which drove me to write, by taking Galileo, for instance, as my hero—assuming, of course, that Galileo should stand firm and never concede the fixity of the earth;—or you yourself in your struggle with the Danish reactionaries.”[^[8]] The gist of the whole is therefore ethical, in spite of its theological clothing, and in spite of the theological phraseology in which Ibsen’s own ethical conceptions were as yet habitually entangled. The faith which inspires it is the faith in the spirit of man—“the one eternal thing,” as Brand declares in a splendid outburst, that of which churches and creeds are only passing moods, and which, now dispersed and disintegrated among the torsos of humanity, shall one day gather once more into a whole.

Brand was to be the ideal antitype of the Norwegian people. But Ibsen’s own complexity of nature, and perhaps also his keen dramatic instinct interfered with this simple scheme. The ideal type grew human and individual; the Titan going forth with drawn sword against the world became a struggling and agonised soul, swayed by doubts and entangled by illusion; the vices he denounces are represented by men, drawn mostly with a genial and humorous, and, in the case of the “humane” old Doctor, with a kindly and sympathetic hand. The beautiful creation of Agnes serves the purpose of satire admirably in the Second Act, where her heroism is set off against the “faintheartedness” of the Peasants and Einar; but in the Third and Fourth Acts she has passed into the domain of tragedy; her heroism is no longer an example hurled at the cringing patriots of 1864, but a pathetic sacrifice to the idol which holds her husband in its spell. Thus the tragedy of Brand, the man, struggling in the grip of his formula, disengages itself from the “satire” of Brand, the Titan, subduing the world to his creed.

Brand is written throughout in one or other of two varieties of four-beat verse. “I wanted a metre in which I could career where I would, as on horseback,” Ibsen said to the present translator in 1893. And in his hands the metre develops a versatility of tone, rhythm and rhyme arrangement for which Browning’s Christmas Eve and Easter Day is the only proximate English parallel. But the two varieties—iambic and trochaic, instead of being deftly mingled, as in L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, are kept strictly apart and used with felicitous effect to heighten the distinction between two classes of scene. The iambic is the measure of the more familiar and pedestrian scenes, where the tone is colloquial, argumentative, satirical, or, again, bustling and lively. The swifter and more sensitive trochaic, on the other hand, is used in scenes of passion and poetry, of poignant emotion, of mystic vision, of solitary thought. Thus all the great revealing crises of the action, the points at which the informing fire breaks through—the monologues of Brand, the visions of Agnes (Acts II. V.), and the scenes in which they successively “stand at the crossway” to choose (end of Acts II. III. IV.)—are conveyed in the more lyrical metre, while the more conversational clothes the intervening tracts of common life.[^[9]]

The present translation retains the metres of the original, and follows the text, in general, line for line. But no attempt has been made at exact correspondence in points, such as the use of single or double rhymes, and the sequence and arrangement of rhymes, where the original itself is completely arbitrary.

[1]. For a more detailed discussion of Brand the reader may be referred to the Introduction prefixed to the original edition of the present translation (London, 1894).

[2]. The poem Troens grund. It is translated by Mr. Wicksteed, Lect., p. 24. This admirable little volume is indispensable to the English student of Ibsen’s poetry.

[3]. Speech to the students, printed in full in Halvorsen, Norsk Forfatter-lexikon, art. “Ibsen.”

[4]. Halvorsen, Forfatter-lexikon, u.s.

[5]. The Stockholm Ny ill. Tidning, 1885, Nos. 14, 15, gives an interesting account of the performance, with several illustrations. Brand was played by E. Hillberg. Ibsen congratulated the Director in a letter printed by Halvorsen, u.s.

[6]. Mr. Gosse has, however, pointed out that it has points of likeness, striking rather than important, to Dobell’s dramatic poem Balder (1854).

[7]. They accepted the King’s demand that the army should be placed absolutely in his hands, but coupled the condition that he was to make war only in alliance with England or France.

[8]. First published by Brandes in his Gjennembrudtsmænd, partially quoted by Jæger, H. Ibsen (Eng. Tr. p. 155).

[9]. In Spain, conversely, the trochaic was the normal metre, the iambic a comparatively rare variation in situations of exceptional dignity.

BRAND

(1865)

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

• Brand.
• His Mother.
• Einar, a painter.
• Agnes.
• The Mayor.
• The Doctor.
• The Dean.
• The Sexton.
• The Schoolmaster.
• Gerd.
• A Peasant.
• His Young Son.
• Another Peasant.
• A Woman.
• Another Woman.
• A Clerk.
• Priests and Officials.
• Crowd: Men, Women and Children.
• The Tempter in the Desert.
• The Invisible Choir.
• A Voice.

The action takes place in our own time, at various points around a fjord-hamlet on the west coast of Norway.

BRAND.

ACT FIRST.

High up in the mountain snowfields. The mist lies thick and close; it is raining, and nearly dark.[dark.]

Brand in black, with stick and wallet, is struggling on westward. A Peasant and his Young Son, who have joined him, are a little way behind.

The Peasant.

[Calling after Brand.]

Hullo, you stranger fellow, stay!

Where are you?

Brand.

Here!

The Peasant.

You’ve got astray!

The fog’s so thick, my sight it passes

To see a staff’s-length ’fore or back——

The Son.

Father, here’s clefts!

The Peasant.

And here crevasses!

Brand.

And not a vestige of the track.

The Peasant.

[Crying out.]

Hold, man! God’s death—! The very ground

Is but a shell! Don’t stamp the snow!

Brand.

[Listening.]

I hear the roaring of a fall.

The Peasant.

A beck has gnawed its way below;

Here’s an abyss that none can sound;

’Twill open and engulf us all!

Brand.

As I have said, I must go on.

The Peasant.

That’s past the power of any one.

I tell you—the ground’s a rotten crust—

Hold, hold, man! Death is where it’s trod.[trod.]

Brand.

A great one gave me charge; I must.

The Peasant.

What is his name?

Brand.

His name is God.

The Peasant.

And what might you be, pray?

Brand.

A priest.

The Peasant.

Maybe; but one thing’s clear at least;

Though you were dean and bishop too

Death will have laid his grip on you

Ere daybreak, if you dare to breast

The glacier’s cavern-cloven crest.

[Approaching warily and insinuatingly.]

Hark, priest, the wisest, learned’st man

Cannot do more than what he can.

Turn back; don’t be so stiff and stout!

A man has but a single life;—

What has he left if that goes out?

The nearest farm is two leagues off,

And for the fog, it’s thick enough

To hack at with a hunting-knife.

Brand.

If the fog’s thick, no glimmering ray

Of marsh-light lures our feet astray.

The Peasant.

All round lie ice-tarns in a ring,

And an ice-tarn’s an ugly thing.

Brand.

We’ll walk across.

The Peasant.

On waves you’ll walk!

Your deeds will hardly match your talk.

Brand.

Yet one has proved,—whose faith is sound

May walk dry-footed on the sea.

The Peasant.

Yes, men of olden time, maybe;

But nowadays he’d just be drowned.

Brand.

[Going.]

Farewell!

The Peasant.

You throw your life away!

Brand.

If God should haply need its loss,——

Then welcome chasm, and flood, and foss.

The Peasant.

[To himself.]

Nay, but his wits are gone astray!

The Son.

[Half-crying.]

Come away, Father! see how black

With coming tempest is the wrack!

Brand.

[Stopping and approaching again.]

Hear, peasant; you at first profess’d,

Your daughter by the fjordside lying,

Had sent you word that she was dying,

But could not with a gladsome breast,

Until she saw you, go to rest?

The Peasant.

That’s certain, as I hope for bliss!

Brand.

And as her last day mentioned—this?

The Peasant.

Yes.

Brand.

Not a later?

The Peasant.

No.

Brand.

Then come.[come.]

The Peasant.

The thing’s impossible—turn home!

Brand.

[Looking fixedly at him.]

Listen! Would you give twenty pound

If she might have a blest release?

The Peasant.

Yes, parson!

Brand.

Forty?

The Peasant.

House and ground

I’d very gladly sign away

If so she might expire in peace!

Brand.

But would you also give your life?

The Peasant.

What? life? My good friend——!

Brand.

Well?

The Peasant.

[Scratching his head.]

Nay, nay,

I draw the line somewhere or other——!

In Jesus’ name, remember, pray,

At home I’ve children and a wife.

Brand.

He whom you mention had a mother.

The Peasant.

Ay, that was in the times of yore;—

Then marvels were of every day;

Such things don’t happen any more.

Brand.

Go home. You travel in death’s track.

You know not God, God knows not you.

The Peasant.

Hoo, you are stern!

The Son.

[Pulling him away.]

Come back! come back![back!]

The Peasant.

Ay, ay; but he must follow too!

Brand.

Must I?

The Peasant.

Ay, if I let you bide

Up here in this accursed weather,

And rumour told, what we can’t hide,

That you and we set out together,

I’m haul’d some morning to the dock,—

And if you’re drown’d in flood and fen,

I’m sentenced to the bolt and lock——

Brand.

You suffer in God’s service, then.

The Peasant.

Nor his nor yours is my affair;

My own is hard enough to bear.

Come then!

Brand.

Farewell!

[A hollow roar is heard in the distance.

The Son.

[Shrieking.]

An avalanche roar!

Brand.

[To the Peasant who has seized his collar.]

Off!

The Peasant.

Nay!

Brand.

This instant!

The Son.

Stay no more!

The Peasant.

[Struggling with Brand.]

Nay, devil take me——!

Brand.

[Shakes him off and throws him down in the snow.]

That, depend

On it, he will do in the end!

[Goes.

The Peasant.

[Sitting and rubbing his arm.]

Ow, ow; his arm’s an iron rod;

And that’s what he calls serving God.[God.]

[Calling as he gets up.]

Ho, priest!

The Son.

He’s gone athwart the hill.

The Peasant.

Ay, but I see him glimmer still.

[Calling again.]

Hear me,—if you remember, say,

Where was it that we lost the way?

Brand.

[In the mist.]

You need no cross to point you right;—

The broad and beaten track you tread.

The Peasant.

God grant it were but as he said,

And I’d sit snug at home to-night.

[He and his Son retire eastwards.

Brand.

[Reappears higher up, and listens in the direction in which the Peasant went.]

Homeward they grovel! Thou dull thrall,

If but thy feeble flesh were all,

If any spark of living will

Sprang in thee, I had help’d thee still.

With breaking back, and feet way-worn,

Lightly and swift I had thee borne;—

But help is idle for the man

Who nothing wills but what he can.

[Goes further on.]

Ah life! ah life! Why art thou then

So passing sweet to mortal men?

In every weakling’s estimation

His own life does as grossly weigh

As if the load of man’s salvation

Upon his puny shoulders lay.

For every burden he’s prepared,

God help us,—so his life be spared!

[Smiles as in recollection.]

Two thoughts in boyhood broke upon me,

And spasms of laughter in me woke,

And from our ancient school-dame won me

Many a just and bitter stroke.

An Owl I fancied, scared by night;

A Fish that had the water-fright;

I sought to banish them;—in vain,

They clung like leeches to my brain.

Whence rose that laughter in my mind?

Ah, from the gulf, dimly divined,

Between the living world we see

And the world as it ought to be,

Between enduring what we must,

And murmuring, it is unjust!

Ah, whole or sickly, great or small,

Such owls, such fishes, are we all.

Born to be tenants of the deep,

Born to be exiles from the sun,

This, even this, does us appal;

We dash against the beetling steep,

Our starry-vaulted home we shun,

And crying to heaven, bootless pray

For air and the glad flames of day!

[Pauses a moment, starts, and listens.]

What do I hear? A sound of singing.

Ay, blended song and laughter ringing.

With now a cheer and now a hollo,—

Another—and another—follow!

Lo, the sun rises; the mist lifts.

Already through the breaking rifts

The illimitable heights I see;

And now that joyous company

Stands out against the morning light

Upon the summit of the height.

Their shadows taper to the west,

Farewells are utter’d, hands are pressed.

And now they part, the others move

Eastward away, two westward wend,

And, waving hats and kerchiefs, send

Their farewell messages of love.

[The sun gradually breaks through and disperses the mist. Brand stands and looks down on the two as they approach.]

How the light glitters round these two!

It is as if the mist took flight,

And flowering heather clothed the height,

And heaven laugh’d round them where they go.

Brother and sister, hand in hand,

They spring along the hill together,

She scarcely stirs the dewy heather,

And he is lissome as a wand.

Now she darts back, he rushes after,

Now slips aside, eludes his aim,—

Out of their gambols grows a game——!

And hark, a song out of their laughter!

[Einar and Agnes, in light summer dress, both of them warm and glowing, come playing across the level. The mist is gone; a bright summer morning lies on the mountains.]

Einar.

Agnes, my beautiful butterfly,

Playfully shalt thou be caught!

I am weaving a net, and its meshes fine

Are all of my music wrought!

Agnes.

[Dancing backwards and always eluding him.]

And am I a butterfly, dainty and slight,

Let me sip of the heather-bell blue,

And art thou a boy, let me be thy sport,

But oh! not thy captive too!

Einar.

Agnes, my beautiful butterfly,

I have woven my meshes so thin,

And never availeth thy fluttering flight,

Soon art thou my captive within.

Agnes.

And am I a butterfly young and bright,

Full joyously I can play,

But if in thy net I a captive lie

Oh, touch not my wings, I pray!

Einar.

Nay, I will lift thee with tender hand,

And lock thee up in my breast,

And there thou shalt play thy whole life long

At the game thy heart loves best.

[They have unwittingly approached a sheer precipice, and are now close to the edge.

Brand.

[Calls down to them.]

Hold! hold! You stand by an abyss!

Einar.

Who calls us?

Agnes.

[Pointing up.]

See!

Brand.

Heed where you go

Your feet are on the hollow snow

That overhangs a precipice.

Einar.

[Clasping her, and laughing up to Brand.]

Needless for her and me your fears!

Agnes.

We have a whole life long to play!

Einar.

In sunshine lies our destined way,

And ends but with a hundred years.

Brand.

And then you perish? So!

Agnes.

[Waving her veil.]

No; then

We fly to heaven and play again!

Einar.

A hundred years to revel given,

Each night the bridal lamps aflame,—

A century of glorious game——

Brand.

And then—?

Einar.

Then home again to heaven,—

Brand.

Aha! so that is whence you came?

Einar.

Of course; how should we not come thence?

Agnes.

That is, our very latest flight

Is from the valley, eastward hence.

Brand.

I think I saw you on the height.

Einar.

Ay, it was there on those loved faces

Even but now we look’d our last,

And with clasp’d hands, kisses, embraces

Seal’d all our tender memories fast!

Come down to us, and I will tell

How God’s been good beyond compare—

And you shall all our gladness share——!

Pooh, stand not like an icicle!

Come, thaw now! There, I like you so.

First, I’m a painter, you must know,

And even this to me was sweet,—

To lend my fancy wings and feet,

In colours to bid life arise,

As He of grubs breeds butterflies.

But God surpass’d Himself when He

My Agnes gave me for my bride!

I came from travels over sea,

My painter’s satchel at my side——

Agnes.

[Eagerly.]

Glad as a king, and fresh, and free,—

And knew a thousand songs beside!

Einar.

Just as the village I pass’d through,

She chanced to dwell an inmate there.

She longed to taste the upland air,

The scented woods, the sun, the dew;

Me God unto the mountains drew,—

My heart cried out: Seek Beauty’s might

In forests dim and rivers bright

And flying clouds beneath the blue.—

Then I achieved my height of art:

A rosy flush upon her cheek,

Two joyous eyes that seem’d to speak,

A smile whose music filled the heart—

Agnes.

For you, though, all that art was vain,

You drank life’s beaker, blind and rapt,

And then, one sunny morn, again

Stood, staff in hand and baggage strapp’d—

Einar.

Then suddenly the thought occurr’d:

“Why, friend, the wooing is forgot!”

Hurrah! I ask’d, she gave her word,

And all was settled on the spot.

Our good old doctor, like a boy,

Was all beside himself with joy;

So three whole days, and whole nights three,

Held revelry for her and me;

Mayor and constable, clerk and priest,—

All the grown youth was at the feast.

Last night we left, but not for that

The revel or the banquet ceased;

With banner’d pole and wreathed hat,

Up over bank, on over brae,

Our comrades brought us on our way.

Agnes.

The mountain-side we danced along,

In couples now, and now in groups,—

Einar.

Drank luscious wine from silver stoups,—

Agnes.

Awoke the summer night with song,—

Einar.

And the thick mist before our feet

Beat an obsequious retreat.

Brand.

And now your way lies—?

Einar.

To the town

Before us.

Agnes.

To my parents’ home.

Einar.

First over yonder peak, then down

To the fjord haven in the west;

On Egir’s courser through the foam

Ride homeward to the bridal feast,—

So to the sunny south together

Like paired swans in their first flight——

Brand.

And there——?

Einar.

A life of summer weather,

A dream, a legend of delight.

For on this Sabbath morn have we,

High on the hills, without a priest,

From fear and sorrow been released

And consecrated to gaiety.

Brand.

By whom?

Einar.

By all the merry crowd.

With ringing glasses every cloud

Was banish’d that might dash the leaves

Too rudely at our cottage eaves.

Out of our speech they put to flight

Each warning word of stormy showers,

And hail’d us, garlanded with flowers,

The true-born children of Delight.

Brand.

[Going.]

Farewell, ye two.

Einar.

[Starting and looking more closely at him.]

I pray you, hold

Something familiar in your face——

Brand.

[Coldly.]

I am a stranger.

Einar.

Yet a trace

Surely there lingers of an old

Friend of my school-days—

Brand.

School-friends, true;

But now I am no more a boy.

Einar.

Can it be——?

[Cries out suddenly.]

Brand! It is! O joy!

Brand.

From the first moment I knew you.

Einar.

Well met! a thousand times well met!

Look at me!—Ay, the old Brand yet,

Still centred on the things within,

Whom never any one could win

To join our gambols.

Brand.

You forget

That I was homeless and alone.

Yet you at least I loved, I own.

You children of the southern land

Were fashion’d of another clay

Than I, born by a rocky strand

In shadow of a barren brae.

Einar.

Your home is here, I think?

Brand.

My way

Lies past it.

Einar.

Past? What, further?

Brand.

Far

Beyond, beyond my home.

Einar.

You are

A priest?

Brand.

[Smiling.]

A mission-preacher, say.

I wander like the woodland hare,

And where I am, my home is there.

Einar.

And whither is your last resort?

Brand.

[Sternly and quickly.]

Inquire not!

Einar.

Wherefore?

Brand.

[Changing his tone.]

Ah,—then know,

The ship that stays for you below

Shall bear me also from the port.

Einar.

Hurrah! My bridal-courser true

Think, Agnes, he is coming too!

Brand.

But I am to a burial bound.

Agnes.

A burial.

Einar.

You? Why, who is dead?

Brand.

The God who was your God, you said.

Agnes.

[Shrinking back.]

Come, Einar!

Einar.

Brand!

Brand.

With cerements wound

The God of each mechanic slave,

Of each dull drudger, shall be laid

By broad day in his open grave.

End of the matter must be made;

And high time is it you should know

He ail’d a thousand years ago.

Einar.

Brand, you are ill!

Brand.

No, sound and fresh

As juniper and mountain-pine!

It is our age whose pining flesh

Craves burial at these hands of mine.

Ye will but laugh and love and play,

A little doctrine take on trust,

And all the bitter burden thrust

On One who came, ye have been told,

And from your shoulders took away

Your great transgressions manifold.

He bore for you the cross, the lance—

Ye therefore have full leave to dance;

Dance then,—but where your dancing ends

Is quite another thing, my friends!

Einar.

Ah, I perceive, the latest cry,

That folks are so much taken by.

You come of the new brood, who hold

That life is only gilded mould,

And with God’s penal fires and flashes

Hound all the world to sack and ashes.

Brand.

No, I am no “Evangelist,”

I speak not as the Church’s priest;

That I’m a Christian, even, I doubt;

That I’m a man, though, I know well,

And that I see the cancer fell

That eats our country’s marrow out.

Einar.

[Smiling.]

I never heard, I must confess,

Our country taxed with being given

To worldly pleasure in excess!

Brand.

No, by delight no breast is riven;—

Were it but so, the ill were less!

Be passion’s slave, be pleasure’s thrall,—

But be it utterly, all in all!

Be not to-day, to-morrow, one,

Another when a year is gone;

Be what you are with all your heart,

And not by pieces and in part.

The Bacchant’s clear, defined, complete,

The sot, his sordid counterfeit;

Silenus charms; but all his graces

The drunkard’s parody debases.

Traverse the land from beach to beach,

Try every man in heart and soul,

You’ll find he has no virtue whole,

But just a little grain of each.

A little pious in the pew,

A little grave,—his fathers’ way,—

Over the cup a little gay,—

It was his father’s fashion too!

A little warm when glasses clash,

And stormy cheer and song go round

For the small Folk, rock-will’d, rock-bound,

That never stood the scourge and lash.

A little free in promise-making;

And then, when vows in liquor will’d

Must be in mortal stress fulfill’d,

A little fine in promise-breaking.

Yet, as I say, all fragments still

His faults, his merits, fragments all,

Partial in good, partial in ill,

Partial in great things and in small;—

But here’s the grief—that, worst or best,

Each fragment of him wrecks the rest!

Einar.

Scoffing’s an easy task: it were

A nobler policy to spare——

Brand.

Perhaps, if it were wholesome too.

Einar.

Well, well, the indictment I endorse

With all my heart; but can’t divine

What in the world it has to do

With Him, the God you count a corse,

Whom yet I still acknowledge mine.

Brand.

My genial friend, your gift is Art;—

Show me the God you have averr’d.

Him you have painted, I have heard,

And touch’d the honest people’s heart.

Old is he haply; am I right?

Einar.

Well, yes——

Brand.

Of course; and, doubtless, white?

Hairs straggling on a reverend head,

A beard of ice or silver-thread;

Kindly, yet stern enough to fright

A pack of children in the night.

I will not ask you, if your God

With fireside slippers you have shod;

But ’twere a pity, without doubt,

To leave skull-cap and glasses out.

Einar.

[Angrily.]

What do you mean?

Brand.

I do not flout;

Just so he looks in form and face,

The household idol of our race.

As Catholics make of the Redeemer

A baby at the breast, so ye

Make God a dotard and a dreamer,

Verging on second infancy.

And as the Pope on Peter’s throne

Calls little but his keys his own,

So to the Church you would confine

The world-wide realm of the Divine;

’Twixt Life and Doctrine set a sea,

Nowise concern yourselves to be;

Bliss for your souls ye would receive,

Not utterly and wholly live.

Ye need, such feebleness to brook,

A God who’ll through his fingers look,

Who, like yourselves, is hoary grown,

And keeps a cap for his bald crown.

Mine is another kind of God!

Mine is a storm, where thine’s a lull,

Implacable where thine’s a clod,

All-loving there, where thine is dull;

And He is young like Hercules,

No hoary sipper of life’s lees!

His voice rang through the dazzled night

When He, within the burning wood,

By Moses upon Horeb’s height

As by a pigmy’s pigmy stood.

In Gibeon’s vale He stay’d the sun,

And wonders without end has done,

And wonders without end would do,

Were not the age grown sick,—like you!

Einar.

[Smiling faintly.]

And now the age shall be made whole?

Brand.

It shall, I say, and that as sure

As that I came to earth to cure

The sapping fester of its soul.

Einar.

[Shaking his head.]

Ere yet the radiant torchlight blazes,

Throw not the taper to the ground!

Nor blot the antiquated phrases

Before the great new words be found!

Brand.

Nothing that’s new do I demand;

For Everlasting Right I stand.

It is not for a Church I cry,

It is not dogmas I defend;

Day dawn’d on both, and, possibly,

Day may on both of them descend.

What’s made has “finis” for its brand;

Of moth and worm it feels the flaw,

And then, by nature and by law,

Is for an embryo thrust aside.

But there is one that shall abide;—

The Spirit, that was never born,

That in the world’s fresh gladsome Morn

Was rescued when it seem’d forlorn,

That built with valiant faith a road

Whereby from Flesh it climb’d to God.

Now but in shreds and scraps is dealt

The Spirit we have faintly felt;

But from these scraps and from these shreds,

These headless hands and handless heads,

These torso-stumps of soul and thought,

A Man complete and whole shall grow,

And God His glorious child shall know,

His heir, the Adam that He wrought!

Einar.

[Breaking off.]

Farewell. I judge that it were best

We parted.

Brand.

You are going west,

I northward. To the fjord from here

Two pathways lead,—both alike near.

Farewell!

Einar.

Farewell.

Brand.

[Turning round again.]

Light learn to part

From vapour.—Know that Life’s an art!

Einar.

[Waving him off.]

Go, turn the universe upside down;

Still in my ancient God I trust!

Brand.

Good; paint his crutches and his crown,—

I go to lay him in the dust!

[Disappears over the pass.

[Einar goes silently to the edge and looks after him.]

Agnes.

[Stands a moment lost in thought; then starts, looks about her uneasily, and asks:]

Is the sun set already?

Einar.

Nay,

A shadowing cloud; and now ’tis past.

Agnes.

The wind is cold!

Einar.

Only a blast

That hurried by. Here lies our way.

Agnes.

Yon mountain southward, sure, till now,

Wore not that black and beetling brow.

Einar.

Thou saw’st it not for game and glee

Ere with his cry he startled thee.

Let him pursue his toilsome track,

And we will to our gambols back!

Agnes.

No, now I’m weary.

Einar.

And indeed

I’m weary too, to tell the truth,—

And here our footing asks more heed

Than on yon upland broad and smooth.

But once we’re on the level plain

We’ll dance defiantly once more,

Ay, in a tenfold wilder vein

And tenfold swifter than before.

See Agnes, yon blue line that sparkles,

Fresh from the young sun’s morning kiss,

And now it dimples and now darkles,

Silver one moment, amber this;

It is the ocean glad and free

That in the distance thou dost see.

And seest thou the smoky track

In endless line to leeward spread?

And seest thou the point of black

Just rounding now the furthest head?

It is the steamer—thine and mine—

And now it speeds into the fjord,

Then out into the foaming brine

To-night with thee and me on board!—

The mists have veil’d the mountain brow—

Saw’st thou how vividly, but now,

Heaven’s image in the water woke!

Agnes.

[Looking absently about her.]

Oh, yes. But tell me—sawest thou——?

Einar.

What?

Agnes.

[In a hushed voice, without looking at him.]

How he tower’d as he spoke?

[She goes down over the pass, Einar follows.

[A path along the crags, with a wild valley beyond to the right. Above, and beyond the mountain, are glimpses of greater heights, with peaks and snow.]

Brand.

[Comes up along the path, descends, stops half-way upon a jutting crag, and gazes into the valley.]

Yes, I know myself once more!

Every boat-house by the shore,

Every home; the landslip-fall,

And the inlet’s fringe of birch,

And the ancient moulder’d church,

And the river alders, all

From my boyhood I recall.

But methinks it all has grown

Grayer, smaller than I knew;

Yon snow-cornice hangs more prone

Than of old it used to do,

From that scanty heaven encloses

Yet another strip of blue,

Beetles, looms, immures, imposes—

Steals of light a larger due.

[Sits down and gazes into the distance.]

And the fjord too. Crouch’d it then

In so drear and deep a den?

’Tis a squall. A square-rigg’d skiff

Scuds before it to the land.

Southward, shadow’d by the cliff,

I descry a wharf, a shed,

Then, a farm house, painted red.—

’Tis the farm beside the strand!

’Tis the widow’s farm. The home

Of my childhood. Thronging come

Memories born of memories dead.

I, where yonder breakers roll,

Grew, a lonely infant-soul.

Like a nightmare on my heart

Weighs the burden of my birth,

Knit to one, who walks apart

With her spirit set to earth.

All the high emprise that stirr’d

In me, now is veil’d and blurr’d.

Force and valour from me fail,

Heart and soul grow faint and frail

As I near my home, I change,

To my very self grow strange—

Wake, as baffled Samson woke,

Shorn and fetter’d, tamed and broke.

[Looks again down into the valley.]

What is stirring down below?

Out of every garth they flow,

Troops of children, wives and men,

And in long lines meet and mingle,

Now among the rocks and shingle

Vanish, now emerge again;—

To the ancient Church they go.

[Rises.]

Oh, I know you, through and through!

Sluggard spirits, souls of lead!

All the Lord’s Prayer, said by you,

Is not with such anguish sped,

By such passion borne on high,

That one tittle thrills the sky

As a ringing human cry,

Save the prayer for daily bread!

That’s this people’s battle-call,

That’s the blazon of them all!

From its context pluck’d apart,

Branded deep in every heart—

There it lies, the tempest-tost

Wreckage of the Faith you’ve lost.

Forth! out of this stifling pit!

Vault-like is the air of it!

Not a Flag may float unfurl’d

In this dead and windless world!

[He is going; a stone is thrown from above and rolls down the slope close by him.

Brand.

[Calling upward.]

Ha! who throws stones there?

Gerd.

[A girl of fifteen, running along the crest with stones in her apron.]

Ho! Good aim!

He screams!

[She throws again.]

Brand.

Hullo, child, stop that game!

Gerd.

Without a hurt he’s sitting now,

And swinging on a wind-swept bough!

[She throws again and screams.]

Now fierce as ever he’s making for me.

Help! Hoo! With claws he’ll rend and gore me!

Brand.

In the Lord’s name——

Gerd.

Whist! who are you?

Hold still, hold still; he’s flying.

Brand.

Who?

Gerd.

Didn’t you see the falcon fly?

Brand.

Here? no.

Gerd.

The laidly fowl with crest

Thwart on its sloping brow depress’d,

And red-and-yellow circled eye.[eye.]

Brand.

Which is your way?

Gerd.

To church I go.

Brand.

Then we can go along together.

Gerd.

[Pointing upward.]

We? But the way I’m bound is thither.

Brand.

[Pointing downward.]

But yonder is the church, you know!

Gerd.

[Pointing downward with a scornful smile.]

That yonder?

Brand.

Truly; come with me.

Gerd.

No; yon is ugly.

Brand.