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

9
But shoots sprouted forth from that shattered tree, — —
Faint spark soon fanned into flaring! —
The young recalled how it used to be, —
Old greatness they longed to be sharing. —
So soon as the man, now apart, can extend
His hand to his brother again as true friend, —
So soon they’ll be one, soon blending, combining
Like winter-night skies with the Northern lights shining!
The tree imagery, deriving perhaps from the great Ash-tree of the Universe (Yggdrasil) of
Norse mythology is often used by Ibsen as an emblem of Scandinavian unity. Here he invokes
it in the face of German claims on Denmark’s Duchies of Slesvig and Holstein, represented as
the vital southern sector of the whole Scandinavian defence system. Svea is Sweden.
1849
MEMORY’S SOURCE
A lassie is sitting at eventide,
Scanning the stream that shimmers, —
And in the depths where the waters glide
The wood’s dark reflection glimmers.
She stares and stares with a wistful smile
As though she felt something lacking;
But blithely, embraced by lush banks meanwhile,
The current flows on ne’er slacking. — —
Thus oft she’d sit as a guileless child, —
Deep down see a phantom shaded:
A stripling who beckoned her, softly smiled, —
The vision had long since faded. —
Ah, now she’s grown up, and however fain
Her thoughts to go childward yearning,
He never, never comes back again,
His vision no more returning.
Yet often she’ll sit by the streamlet’s verge,
Cheeks all bedewed with her crying; —
On glides the current’s soft rippling surge,
Scarce ruffled by dusk’s mild sighing. —
And then the moon casts an eerie light
Down from the arched vault yonder; —
She stares in the wave and she thinks she might
Still see that phantom there wander! — — —
Water spirits were, by tradition, dangerously seductive.