MOUNTAIN LIFE
by: Henrik Ibsen
- N summer dusk the valley lies
- With far-flung shadow veil;
- A cloud-sea laps the precipice
- Before the evening gale:
- The welter of the cloud-waves grey
- Cuts off from keenest sight
- The glacier, looking out by day
- O'er all the district, far away,
- And crowned with golden light.
-
- But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow,
- Where gold and amber kiss,
- Stands up the archipelago,
- A home of shining peace.
- The mountain eagle seems to sail
- A ship far seen at even;
- And over all a serried pale
- Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail,
- Fronts westward threatening heaven.
-
- But look, a steading nestles, close
- Beneath the ice-fields bound,
- Where purple cliffs and glittering snows
- The quiet home surround.
- Here place and people seem to be
- A world apart, alone; --
- Cut off from men by spate and scree
- It has a heaven more broad, more free,
- A sunshine all its own.
-
- Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays,
- Half shadow, half aflame;
- The deep, still vision of her gaze
- Was never word to name.
- She names it not herself, nor knows
- What goal my be its will;
- While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows
- It bears her where the sunset glows,
- Or, maybe, further still.
-
- Too brief, thy life on highland wolds
- Where close the glaciers jut;
- Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds
- Stone byre and pine-log hut.
- Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze
- The winter's well-worn tasks; --
- But spin thy wool with cheerful face:
- One sunset in the mountain pays
- For all their winter asks.
'Mountain Life' was originally published
in 1859. This English translation is reprinted from Lyrics
& Poems from Ibsen. Trans. Fydell Edmund Garrett. New
York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1912. |
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