Explore "Niels Lyhne" by J.P. Jacobsen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For about a year, Niels Lyhne had lived at Lønborggård, managing the farm as well as he knew how and as much as his old steward would let him. He had taken down his shield, blotted out his 'scutcheon, and resigned. Humanity would have to get along without him; he had learned to know the joy found in purely physical labor, in seeing the pile growing under his hand, in being able to get through with what he was doing so that he really was through, in knowing that when he went away tired the strength that he had used up lay behind him in his work, and the work would stand and not be eaten up by doubt in the night or dispersed by the breath of criticism on the morning after. There were no Sisyphus stones in agriculture.
What a joy it was, too, when he had worked till he was tired, to go to bed and gather strength in sleep and to spend it again, as regularly as day and night follow one upon the other, never hindered by the caprices of his brain, never having to handle himself gingerly like a tuned guitar with loose pegs.