cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

Now she is grown, and yet how often she remembers her childhood days that never, never
come again, nor do its sights return!
Still she sits often by the spring's bank, her cheeks are stained with tears; the waves
trickle slowly away, the evening breeze ripples them lightly.
Then the moon casts a mysterious gleam this way from the vaulted arch; she gazes into
the wave and thinks she still sees that image yonder!
THE BALL OF THE DEAD
Across the deserted churchyard the night has spread its wings; the dead slumber there so
peacefully, a slumber not easily troubled; and mysteriously in the moon's radiance may be
glimpsed the marble stone, which, adorned with sentimental wreaths, covers the bones of
the dead.
But the silence of yon grave is broken by midnight's hollow stroke; then, if you would
only listen, you would hear a faint uproar, and while it approaches, it thunders more and
more, and the stroller genuflects and shudders, although he sees nothing!
Then the sunken graves are opened and every moss-covered stone, and forth from those
low dwellings so silently the dead step out. Yet at every step they clapped their rotting
knucklebones; but the gown, that white linen, it shone pure as the snow.
They take hold of one another's hands, and gather as for a celebration; a lygtmand 19 burns
like a lamp, every skeleton is a welcome guest, each seizes its neighbor's hand and dances
so wildly in a ring; perhaps a prince's spirit leaps around with a beggar's!
Don't think that musicians are lacking at such an excellent ball: a skeleton rattles his
knuckles, a second might make ready to strike a skull like a drum; it resounds, like the
last sigh from a breaking heart; see, that is the dead's music!
They dance so merrily around and about the crumbled grave monuments; but the graves
wait for them once more, only one hour are they granted, the ball they gave is ended;
since the clock's stroke sounds hollowly, and deep in the peaceful grave they slumber
until Judgement Day!
19 “Corpse-man,” a figure from folklore.
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