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

98
When it was summer over dale and lea,
Inside here all was silent and deserted.
There was some impulse drove you all to flee,
To visit God’s own nature, be diverted
Amid fresh limes, beside the beck’s loud glee,
And nothing served to keep you here, converted.
And you, whom for the first time we can greet
Once more as patrons, after your desertion,
Did you forget us on your life-excursion?
And while the house was dark, and every seat
Stood empty, while the curtains weren’t retracting —
What did you do? You had a go at acting!
II
Yes you, from mere spectator, came to be
An actor on the great stage of existence
Who played an act composed by destiny
With you cast in the lead role de resistance.
Though on Life’s boards a novice, patently,
You’ll not have acted quite without assistance —
For there’s a godling from antiquity
That’s played his nooky role with great persistence.
It’s said he’s blind, and yet he’s enterprising —
There’s nothing he can’t manage, quite discreetly,
So that the Act ends with a pairing, neatly.
And that is why he loathes soliloquising —
He knows it’s like the Prologue — paralysing;
If not kept short it’s bound to bore, completely.
III
Good luck to you if destiny meant filling
A role in that two-actor sort of show,
Then you’ll have memories for Autumn’s chilling —
You’ll have Spring flowering in Winter’s snow.
Your summer life became a vaudevilling,
A spray upon Life’s tree that bloom weighed low.
The thrush’s song, the lark’s pellucid trilling
Could through the piece in pretty couplets flow.
All of the art’s bad moments you could weather,
Except perhaps a certain speech on cue,
And then you fared as many others do,