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

256
How Egyptian — one and all
bring a little stone to fall
into place in their erection.
How precise, the formulation;
how exact the calculation!
Yes, it’s great without a doubt,
so great that the world stands gaping; —
yet a quavering ‘but’ escaping
from the open mouth slips out.
Doubt takes over, asking gently:
Is it great, so evidently?
What gives work its quality? —
Mass-appeal is not the measure
but strong personality,
the inspired work’s hidden treasure.
Right, but now that horde Germanic,
storming Paris in this way?
Who stands firm amid the panic,
who alone wins victory’s bay?
When did one man’s reputation
shine that thousands voiced his praises,
sang him home with anthems fair?
Squadron, regiment, formation,
H.Q. — viz: spy operation —
lazy hounds who hunt in braces
track the quarry to its lair.
Hence the halo’s loss of glory. —
There’s no poet tells that story;
and there’s nought that lives for long
save what’s dignified in song.
Think of Gustavus Adolfus —
tales of leadership engulf us;
think of Bender’s hero, captured, —
of that thunder-bolt, Per Wessel
in his night-dispelling vessel,
Kongedyp’s men, blithe and bold; —
memory spreads its canopies
o’er them like a choir enraptured
with its spate of harmonies,
to the plaudits thousand-fold
from Spring’s festival marquees.
Then consider men today,
all those Fritzes, Blumenthalers,
and those Junker ‘generalers’,
count them, count their massed array!
Under Prussia’s pestilential