Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/Home
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HOME.
I'm longing for the forest:
The pathway in the grasses,
The house that on the ness is.
What orchards hold such apples
Deep-hid from eager spying?
What grain, when zephyr dapples,
Can breathe so soft a sighing?
Where can I better slumber
When bells the night-hours number?
The pathway in the grasses,
The house that on the ness is.
What orchards hold such apples
Deep-hid from eager spying?
What grain, when zephyr dapples,
Can breathe so soft a sighing?
Where can I better slumber
When bells the night-hours number?
Where do my memories tarry?
Where are my dead still living?
Where do I live undaunted,
Though years with sordid fingers
My fate are grayly weaving?
I like a shade have haunted
The place where memory lingers.
Oh, seek not near to hover,
Although the doors are fastened
And matted strewings cover
The steps, where winds have hastened
And dropped the leaves that wither.
Bring new-voiced laughter hither.
Let new floods from these places
Bear me, their banks o'erswelling,
Unto the silent races.
I sit within here lonely,
Myself a memory only,—
This is my kingly dwelling.
Where are my dead still living?
Where do I live undaunted,
Though years with sordid fingers
My fate are grayly weaving?
I like a shade have haunted
The place where memory lingers.
Oh, seek not near to hover,
Although the doors are fastened
And matted strewings cover
The steps, where winds have hastened
And dropped the leaves that wither.
Bring new-voiced laughter hither.
Let new floods from these places
Bear me, their banks o'erswelling,
Unto the silent races.
I sit within here lonely,
Myself a memory only,—
This is my kingly dwelling.
Oh, say not that our elders.
Whose eyes are closed forever,
That those we fain would banish
And from our lives would sever,—
Say not their colors vanish
Like flowers and like grasses,
That we from hearts efface them
Like dust, when one would clear it
From ancient window-glasses.
In power they upraise them,
A host they of the spirit,
The whole wide earth enshrouding,
Our thoughts too overclouding.
Whate'er our fate or fortune,
Our thoughts, like swallows crowding,
Fly home at evening duly.
A home! how firm its base is
By walls securely shielded,—
Our world—the one thing truly
We in this world have builded.
Whose eyes are closed forever,
That those we fain would banish
And from our lives would sever,—
Say not their colors vanish
Like flowers and like grasses,
That we from hearts efface them
Like dust, when one would clear it
From ancient window-glasses.
In power they upraise them,
A host they of the spirit,
The whole wide earth enshrouding,
Our thoughts too overclouding.
Whate'er our fate or fortune,
Our thoughts, like swallows crowding,
Fly home at evening duly.
A home! how firm its base is
By walls securely shielded,—
Our world—the one thing truly
We in this world have builded.