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

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wheel, snarl like harriers,
gulls against raven;
arrow-clouds darken the fjord on their way.
The Queen’s mighty dream-tree — the onslaught broadens!
Telemark-, Agder-men menace with ardour
its canopy. Fear not — Haarfager’s wardens
circle its root with their nimble axe-cordons,
ward off the whistling broad-axe to guard a
life for the future’s thousand-year saga.
Daylight fades, the long shadows are falling.
Roald and Sote and Tore are sleeping;
sun-set is creeping.
With it an age sets that outlived its brawling; —
the new age is calling. —
King Kjøtve flees in disgrace from the battle
though he can never escape from time’s tattle.
Still, as Hornklove tells us, he skelters
homeward-bound, yearning
for mead and soused herring.
But Harald rigs shelters
on warships and carriers.
They venture forth turning
dawn-ward, those harriers,
those ranks of high derring.
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So passed a thousand years. Some harsh, some kind
the Norns between them span upon fate’s spindle.
The dream-tree flourished in the people’s mind,
its canopy, fruit-laden boughs, ne’er dwindle.
For now the folk can pause, scan unconfined
astern. Now rears the boulder-stone to kindle
the whole land’s silent pæan, granite-shrined. —
On guard, my folk! Shun party, sport and revel; —
there stirs within the murk a baleful devil.
I see my home where mountain mists are swirling, —
my home where gales disturb the moorland calm,
where both within and out the din keeps skirling,
where isolation severs farm from farm.
What is it lurks at dusk, for byways questing?
Who is that shadow, one I’ve seen before?
He frees the latch upon the peasant’s door,
glides stocking-foot towards the man who’s resting; —
he whispers in the sleeper’s ear, beguiling, —
then to the nearest neighbour — silent, smiling.
And I see more than one such apparition,
and it is more than words that claims attention; —
I sense a kind of dirge of inanition,