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

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We’ve sung the Past’s bright day in Present’s night
with festive glee; but none thought to enquire:
Can he inherit treasure, as of right,
who lacks the grasp to heap the treasure higher?
A sultry heaviness invests the mountains.
The land, wrapped in a silentness, lies still,
as though the people’s life, its very fountains,
were poisoned cunningly with witch-like skill.
Like birds that mope at sun’s eclipse in blackness,
I see my folk sit mute, a scattered band;
its marrow dried, its thews reduced to slackness,
while noon-tide murk makes dark the dale and strand.
The poet heeds the tide that sweeps a nation.
His flag should flutter in the vanguard’s thrust;
but solve its problem, that he shall and must,
regardless of the final destination.
The people’s yearnings through his song are freed;
he shrives its sins, interprets its contrition;
he sighs its terrors forth; its hidden need
he clothes in words. Hence, singer — hence his mission.
And therefore I have turned both mind and gaze
far from our past’s soul-deadened saga stories,
far from our dream-lie of great future glories,
and enter our own present world of haze.
The solitude of pine-woods I shall wander,
my cloak drenched through and clammy to my frame,
in autumn’s dusk that serves as veil for shame,
repose from grief, for me and others yonder.
My poem’s like a hillside clad in heather
that rises gently from the peasant’s plot.
But past the ridge, from some clear vantage spot,
there you will view white summits wreathed together.
I’ve tuned my zither low to set my work;
but sound is coloured by the under-stringing.
Hence in the poem shall a poem lurk, —
and he who grasps that, grasps the song I’m singing.
From the time of ripening.
It was a sabbath eve, so calm, relaxing,
the wondrous peace that’s known to everyone, —
the peace rich in repose and so untaxing
at sun’s decline, the week’s long labours done, —
peace, as though frozen in suspense, displayed
within a household when, the lamps collected
reveal the party’s ready, table laid,
the clock strikes and the guests may be expected.