THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John ...

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Ibsen left Bergen in that year to join the Norwegian Theatre in Christiania.
POEMS FROM THE SECOND CHRISTIANIA PERIOD
1857-64
PROLOGUE
at
THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF THE TALE OF THE MOUNTAINS
at the Kristiania Norwegian Theatre
[18 th Sept. 1857]
It is not so far distant — the memory survives —
Since we found wholly alien the common people’s lives,
Since ancient peasant ballads, the lur’s resounding tone,
Were likely to be met with in country parts alone.
A little to the south, though, art bloomed and bard-hood too,
Whereof we caught a little whiff (at second hand, it’s true),
But life in moor and forest, the life the folk there lead
Remained a world denied us, a book we could not read.
Could an artistic subject be wrought of such-like stuff ?
Therein can the aesthetic be treated well enough?
Thus posed our bards the question and sang of “pagan days”,
Composing — on Apollo and Bacchus — “folkish” lays.
But two of Norway’s sons saw things in quite a different light.
Of course, — for they had slumbered a whole midsummer night,
Dreamt of the sprite’s weird chanting close by the rushing fall,
And what it was they heard there, they sang back to us all.
Yes, — poetry thus issued from out our native ground;
It was the first spring bird-call song to make our groves resound, —
It sang a long while lonely, grew poorly for a spell,
But what grows now but slowly may some day grow right well.
For should the bush and berry make green our summer clime,
Then birds will sit and sing beneath the sæter-trees with time!
And if the folk list kindly to lur and zither string
Then in the farm-yard, on the scree it’s tenfold they will ring.
But yon pair who delivered our true and native voice,
Shall, till the final reaping, in high esteem rejoice;
Now may they share in slumber the mother-land’s embrace, —
Their graves may be forgotten, their names nought can efface.
Henr. Ibsen