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

95
God knows there were pictures enough in my soul,
I was artist at heart as such;
I lacked just one single, solitary thing, —
But that thing was the artist’s touch. —
I sketch out in pencil a stormy wreck
Amid billowing waves that drown it;
If I were a poet, I’d sketch with a pen
The draft of a lyric to crown it.
But midst my shortcomings there’s granted one boon
Wherewith my despair is abated;
A boon that’s a life-saving spar for me,
And all geniuses dream-inflated.
The boon of remembrance, its lyrical charm,
The right to poetic anguish;
Sweetly I’ve dreamed and been cruelly waked,
And so I’ve good cause to languish.
And so I settle, now here, now there,
And paint, dream, paint in profusion,
And languish, remembering, sadly gaze
Upon my ideal’s delusion.”
XVIII
Just like the woman artist I saw ponder,
I too have swooned in visions wild and bright,
And plied poetic wings to reach the height,
And dreamed of passage through heaven’s portal yonder.
I too, alas, have dared flight’s vale to wander;
The final wing-beat drained my strength and might, —
My spring-time story-book is now closed tight,
It’s time to moralise — I’ve time to squander.
I stroll around my private gallery,
Where my works hang as did the heavenly Mary,
Swarthy as gypsy folk as they pass by me.
And as from nectar the industrious bee
Sucks honey for the winter commissary,
So I sip my spring blossoms to supply me.
XIX
Why have I never felt my incompleteness
When life’s tame ducks flapped round me in a rabble?
However dull I found their empty gabble,
I only dimly sensed my own effeteness.