THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John ...

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“Recovered though, her pace proved not a slow one!
From earliest morning until late at nights
she set about to put the house to rights;
she handled everything; she trusted no-one.
And all done with an urgent, silent questing
like some sick person in compulsion’s clutch;
it was as though she were afraid of resting,
of darkness and reflection and all such.
“Now, on the farm a brindled dog was staying;
and this the boy adored with all his heart.
Sometime towards the spring, the boy was playing
with the small creature in a place apart.
They sprawled on sand, against the wall — no clamour —
the dog’s tail wagged, the boy’s hand stroked its coat; —
and then some troll-force seized him by the throat;
he rose and went and came back with a hammer.
“He swung; the small dog whined, the boy hit squarely;
it fell and yelped, got up and fell again;
it seemed to howl for mercy, dragged — though barely —
its crippled self beneath the steps in pain.
Just then, before he knew one way or other
how to confront full-faced, what he had done,
there in the nearby barn door stood his mother,
tall, skinny, grey, demanding of her son:
“ ‘Why did you hit it?’ came her angry cry;
he shrank, it froze the blood within him coursing;
one stands in dread of Mother, one knows why, —
but still he raised his head by dint of forcing;
he stood there, hammer poised still, and in silence,
hand clenched upon the haft, a stiff, straight arm,
then answered with a stare that spoke defiance:
‘That was for having done my life such harm!’ “
Over the great mountain
In Norway there’s a region stands out clear;
it rises eastward from the valley, gently,
it plunges westward to the fjord-side, sheer,
the region of bare heights preeminently.
There russet ling usurps the place of tree.
There midst rough boulders it is moss thrives only,
the glacier there spreads wide its livery,
there lives the reindeer, undisturbed and lonely.
Within this region run no beaten ways,
wild country for both walking and reflection;
now swirls the snow-field like a forest blaze,