Now I will recompense your kind intent To save me, with an earnest admonition. That falcon-image gave me sudden vision What your “emancipation” really meant. You said you were the falcon, that must fight Athwart the wind if it would reach the sky, I was the breeze you must be breasted by, Else vain were all your faculty of flight; How pitifully mean! How paltry! Nay How ludicrous, as you yourself divined! That seed, however, fell not by the way, But bred another fancy in my mind Of a far more illuminating kind. You, as I saw it, were no falcon, but A tuneful dragon, out of paper cut, Whose Ego holds a secondary station, Dependent on the string for animation; Its breast was scrawled with promises to pay In cash poetic,—at some future day; The wings were stiff with barbs and shafts of wit That wildly beat the air, but never hit; The tail was a satiric rod in pickle To castigate the town’s infirmities, But all it compass’d was to lightly tickle The casual doer of some small amiss. So you lay helpless at my feet, imploring: “O raise me, how and where is all the same! Give me the power of singing and of soaring. No matter at what cost of bitter blame!” FALK [_clenching his fists in inward agitation_]. Heaven be my witness—! SVANHILD. No, you must be told:— For such a childish sport I am too old. But you, whom Nature made for high endeavour, Are you content the fields of air to tread Hanging your poet’s life upon a thread That at my pleasure I can slip and sever? FALK [_hurriedly_]. What is the date to-day? SVANHILD [_more gently_]. Why, now, that’s right! Mind well this day, and heed it, and beware; Trust to your own wings only for your flight, Sure, if they do not break, that they will bear. The paper poem for the desk is fit, That which is lived alone has life in it; _That_ only has the wings that scale the height; Choose now between them, poet: be, or write! [_Nearer to him._ Now I have done what you besought me; now My requiem is chanted from the bough; My only one; now all my songs are flown; Now, if you will, I’m ready for the stone! [_She goes into the house;_ FALK _remains motionless, looking after her; far out on the fjord is seen a boat, from which the following chorus is faintly heard:_ CHORUS.