choir of all mankind.
See, here are we all, your sisters and brothers. Your fate is ours. We
are flung by the indifferent law of the universe into a life that we
cannot order as we would; we are ravaged by injustice, by sickness and
sorrow, by fire and blood. Even the happiest must die. In his own home
he is but on a visit. He never knows but that he may be gone tomorrow.
And yet man smiles and laughs in the face of his tragic fate. In the
midst of his thraldom he has created the beautiful on earth; in the
midst of his torments he has had so much surplus energy of soul that he
has sent it radiating forth into the cold deeps of space and warmed them
with God.

So marvellous art thou, O spirit of man! So godlike in thy very nature!
Thou dost reap death, and in return thou sowest the dream of everlasting
life. In revenge for thine evil fate thou dost fill the universe with an
all-loving God.

We bore our part in his creation, all we who now are dust; we who sank
down into the dark like flames gone out;--we wept, we exulted, we felt
the ecstasy and the agony, but each of us brought our ray to the mighty
sea of light, each of us, from the negro setting up the first mark above
the grave of his dead to the genius raising the pillars of a temple
towards heaven. We bore our part, from the poor mother praying beside
a cradle, to the hosts that lifted their songs of praise high up into
boundless space.

Honour to thee, O spirit of man. Thou givest a soul to the world,
thou settest it a goal, thou art the hymn that lifts it into harmony;
therefore turn back into thyself, lift high thy head and meet proudly
the evil that comes to thee. Adversity can crush thee, death can blot
thee out, yet art thou still unconquerable and eternal.

Dear friend, it was thus I felt. And when the corn was sown, and I went
back, the sun was glancing over the shoulder of the hill. There by the
fence stood Merle, looking at me. She had drawn a kerchief forward over
her brow, after the fashion of the peasant women, so that her face was
in shadow; but she smiled to me--as if she, too, the stricken mother,
had risen up from the ocean of her suffering that here, in the daybreak,
she might take her share in the creating of God. . . .

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES

For the convenience of readers a few points in which Norwegian
pronunciation differs from English are noted below:

The vowels a, e, and i in the middle of word