cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

From your childhood's fair spring
He walks cheerfully by your side,
Humming gently the songs of the past,
Weaving beautiful
Evergreen
Memory-wreaths in your hair.
The Spring disappears, still you have
A memory-flower left over,--
Yes, each page in life's book
Is written full of lovely memories,
And when down the stream of time
You again leaf through them
The memories stand in rows
Like shapes from a dream,
Familiar,
Heaven-sent,
Just like the beautiful flowers of Spring,
When your heart's Winter comes.--
Yes, from each of your life's moments
Gently trembles an after-echo
Sometimes short and sometimes long
Through the strings of memory's harp;
Yet among all the past's days,
If you call them back,
No moment so rich in memories
As a gay ball you find!
Perhaps it sounds a little strange,
Besides a little unpoetic,--
For an ear, finely aesthetic
It was perhaps more precious
In the ballroom that night to hear
Something "lovelier" and "greater,"
Just as if the lighted hall,
Festively decorated for a ball,
Where a charming flock of coquettes
Hurls the glance's fireworks
While the music strikes up,--
Were without poetry!
Still, it is not such memories,
Which appear before the soul's eye,
There is sincerity also,
Not merriment alone,
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