To spread your table and bring your food.
If you'd eat, my lad, you must help yourself,
Fetch your rations raw from the wood and stream,
Split your own fir-roots[1] and light your own fire,
Bustle around, and arrange and prepare things.
Would you clothe yourself warmly, you must stalk your deer;
Would you found you a house, you must quarry the stones;
Would you build up its walls, you must fell the logs,
And shoulder them all to the building-place.—
[His axe sinks down; he gazes straight in front of him.
Brave shall the building be. Tower and vane
Shall rise from the roof-tree, high and fair.
And then I will carve, for the knob on the gable,
A mermaid, shaped like a fish from the navel.
Brass shall there be on the vane and the door-locks.
Glass I must see and get hold of too.
Strangers, passing, shall ask amazed:
What is that glittering far on the hillside?
[Laughs angrily.
Devil's own lies! There they come again.
You're an outlaw, lad!
[Hewing vigorously.
A bark-thatched hovel
Is shelter enough both in rain and frost.
[Looks up at the tree.
Now he stands wavering. There; only a kick,
And he topples and measures his length on the ground;—
- ↑ "Tyri," resinous pine-wood which burns with a bright
blaze.
