Ay, an outlaw, ay. You’ve no mother now
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 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 that is glittering far on the hillside.