#hjemvee

Unfamiliar evening breezes! Beckoning my longing mind. Scents of flowers mildly pleases: Say, whereunto do you wind! Passing over whiter strand To my dearest motherland? Will your waftings there reveal What my aching heart conceals?

Feeble sun! Behind the mountains Fire-red your slow descend. Lone I sit by craggy fountains, Desolate my heart distends. Mountains are not in my home! Ah, how long I must have roamed. Shan’t tonight rest like a child In the viridescence mild.

Son of Norway! I remember You have said with quiv’ring heart: ’Only home relights the ember Dimmed by longing, far apart.’ Swiss who live on mountains firm! You have used a sim’lar term; Driven home with sacred yearning, Ever to the mounts returning.

Do you think that cliffs uniquely, solely on the heart imprints? Oh! The rocks and ridges bleakly Turn my mind with frightened hints. Sings the praise of pine and fir! Denmark’s beech woods I prefer. Pallid river thusly weaving Causes my soul naught but grieving.

Home no river rushes great nor Through a clay-filled bed it flees. Spring of life, triumphant Mater Widens out, the glaucous sea, Winding with a tight embrace 'Round her daughter's verdant grace And by flowers is diverted, Young Siølunda’s hillocks skirted.

Hush, oh hush! The boat is hither Rocked betwixt the brush and reed; Soft a maid sings by the zither In the twilight, summer-sweet: Such pure tones! A gentle zest Floods delightfully my breast! Then what do I miss, descanting, On her pleasant way of chanting?

This is not the Danish phrasing, These are not the wonted sounds, Not the ones sung through my raising In my childhood’s wooded grounds; Better will they ring, maybe, But alas! no good for me. Better mayhap the song flows; She forgives at least my woes.

She won’t harshly judge my quiver, Nothing but unwilling sighs. Longingly cascades the river, Mild and fair the evening skies. Many such an evenhour Sat I in my dearest bower. Memories well up, returning, Causing all my hurt and yearning.