FALK.
To work then, man!

STIVER.
How?

FALK.
You may still do so!
Let the world's prudish owl unheeded flutter by;
Freedom converts the grub into a butterfly!

STIVER.
You mean, to break the engagement--?

FALK.
That's my mind;--
The fruit is gone, why keep the empty rind?

STIVER.
Such a proposal's for a green young shoot,
Not for a man of judgment and repute.
I heed not what King Christian in his time
(The Fifth) laid down about engagements broken-off;
For that relationship is nowhere spoken of
In any rubric of the code of crime.
The act would not be criminal in name,
It would in no way violate the laws--

FALK.
Why there, you see then!

STIVER [firmly].
Yes, but all the same,--
I must reject all pleas in such a cause.
Staunch comrades we have been in times of dearth;
Of life's disport she asks but little share,
And I'm a homely fellow, long aware
God made me for the ledger and the hearth.
Let others emulate the eagle's flight,
Life in the lowly plains may be as bright.
What does his Excellency Goethe say
About the white and shining milky way?
Man may not there the milk of fortune skim,
Nor is the butter of it meant for him.

FALK.
Why, even were fortune-churning our life's goal,
The labour must be guided by the soul;--
Be citizens of the time that is--but then
Make the time worthy of the citizen.
In homely things lurks beauty, without doubt,
But watchful eye and brain must draw it out.
Not every man who loves the soil he turns
May therefore claim to be another Burns.(5)

STIVER.
Then let us each our proper path pursue,
And part in peace; we shall not hamper you;
We keep the road, you hover in the sky,
There where we too once floated, she and I.
But work, not song, provides our daily bread,
And when a man's alive, his music's dead.
A young man's life's a lawsuit, and the most
Superfluous litigation in existence:
Plead where and how you will, your suit is lost.

FALK [bold and confident, with a glance at the
summer-house].
Nay, tho' I took it to the highest place,--
Judgment, I know, would be reversed by grace!
I know two hearts can live a life complete,
With hope still ardent, and with faith still sweet;
You preach the wretched gospel of the hour,
That the Ideal is secondary!

STIVER.
No!
It's primary: appointed, like the flower,
To generate the fruit