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

53
Full many a grieving soul has found
The heart’s lost peacefulness.
I still recall so very clear
My streaming flood of tear on tear
The time that I was led,
A little lad, to school, first day;
No doubt it was the self-same lay
I sang as when, a babe, I’d been
Too early put to bed.
A gang of schoolboys, boisterous, rough,
Mill in the street, content enough, —
The sled runs smooth again;
I press against the window-pane
And watch them, sorrowful at heart,
And then the hot tears run.
Because it’s Christmas Eve, and bright
With moonbeams and with snow so white,
But, o! my boots have come apart,
I can’t join in the fun.
Thus have I often since that day
From heart’s sheer fullness grieved;
I’ve soothed its deep-felt pangs away
And felt thereby relieved.
But till the soul was roused in me
The tear contained mere misery,
I had not grasped what potency
Was hidden in the tear.
Then came the time when I would read
A poet’s lofty strain,
In tear’s warm bath I cleansed my pain
And purified my inner need
And soothed its urgency, —
And then I felt the undertow
That deep in Beauty’s depths can flow,
And then at last I learnt to read
A tear-drop’s poesy!
A SATURDAY EVENING
IN HARDANGER
(By Brynjolf Bjarme)
H.I.
It is a Saturday, the evening’s fine
With cowbells hushed, long shadows slowly creeping,
With hazy mists that on the ridge recline
Where cuckoo, thrush build cosy nests for sleeping,