Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/257

He throve, as many a cultivated patch
Bore witness, bravely clad in waving gold.
At church he kept his right hand in his pocket,—
But sure I am at home his fingers nine
Toiled every whit as hard as others' ten.—
One spring the torrent washed it all away.
  Their lives were spared. Ruined and stripped of all,
He set to work to make another clearing;
And, ere the autumn, smoke again arose
From a new, better-sheltered, mountain farm-*house.
Sheltered? From torrent—not from avalanche;
Two years, and all beneath the snow lay buried.
  But still the avalanche could not daunt his spirit.
He dug, and raked, and carted—cleared the ground—
And the next winter, ere the snow-blasts came,
A third time was his little homestead reared.
  Three sons he had, three bright and stirring boys;
They must to school, and school was far away;—
And they must clamber, where the hill-track failed,
By narrow ledges past the headlong scree.
What did he do? The eldest had to manage
As best he might, and, where the path was worst,
His father bound a rope round him to stay him;—
The others on his back and arms he bore.
  Thus he toiled, year by year, till they were men.
Now might he well have looked for some return.
In the New World, three prosperous gentlemen
Their school-going and their father have forgotten.
  He was short-sighted. Out beyond the circle
Of those most near to him he nothing saw.