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

81
Far beyond the billows buried.
Thither where your cradle stood
You would dreaming roam though waking,
Gladly barter the grape’s blood
For the upland stream’s cool slaking.
Should you, in dark winter’s spell,
To your lonely room repairing,
Sit and draw from Memory’s well,
Gaze into the stove’s bright flaring; —
Would not thought take wing to seek
For the nursery it remembers,
Where, a child, well-combed and meek,
You would bask by glowing embers?
And your childhood fairy-tales,
Old songs sung you by your mother,
Which, when Life’s commotion rails,
In oblivion’s cloaking smother, —
Lo, they reassert their charm,
Prompting you of days long vanished
As your thoughts seek out the banished
Mother-home’s unbroken calm.
Home’s allure that, to the grave,
Still maintains its potent presence,
Also, sun-like, warm and brave,
Rules supreme in Art’s fair pleasance.
If a bloom’s to flourish there,
Home-soil’s what must set it growing,
Else it lacks the colours rare
Which, in glory, should be glowing.
And wherein does home fall short?
Like a hedge-row’s blushing roses,
Like a modest verse well-wrought,
Our life’s surging ne’er reposes.
Are not ways the folk observe
Where high pastures, dales restrict them,
Images which well deserve
That an artist-hand depict them?
Plane- and orange-tree may well
Beautify the South’s flat regions,
But upon the North’s proud fell
Pine-trees flourish in their legions —
Is their vaulting not benign,
Does it lack for scent or shading?
Why should Art then build its shrine
Solely in a southern glading?