Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/115

So that the green-gray giant suddenly
Was as a maiden for her bridal dressed.

The service done, the ringer came, but paused
In dumb surprise, his arm against a beam,
To note the verdant head-dress of the bell
With reddish-purple cherries all agleam.
His wife had often rung the bell before;
She waited not his grumble or his frown
But on the well-worn treadle of the bell
She set her foot, strong-sinewed, bare and brown.
The bell swayed heavily from side to side,
Now the first deafening strokes were heard to ring.
With that the frightened jackdaws raised a cry,
And tower, roof and beams began to swing.

  ——Ding! Dong!——
She tramped at the treadle and sang her song:
"From the tower's quivering height
Ring forth over square and street!
Afar lies the plain with its waving wheat
And the woods where the sun glows bright.
Not only over the fields and bays,
Where, O bell, thy notes are hurled,
But over the weeks and years I gaze
To the brothering-time of the world.
I see not savage and weaponed men,
Not kindled cities aflame—
Such a world would be but again
The old world, the ill world, the same.