Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/From "The Forest of Tiveden"

by Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam

FROM "THE FOREST OF TIVEDEN."

Part I.
 
Hark how the fir-trees in dismal tones,
Like the minor discords of drum and horn,
Sing a weird lament, all squeaks and groans,
That trolls have composed in this land forlorn!

And here, while gnat-swarms pipe and dance,
Past ages arise as in a trance.
These great ferns grew in an earlier æon;
Those moss-grown rocks with impending mass
Are piled in a rampart cyclopean;
Each rotten log in the wild morass
Is a deep-sea monster that here sticks out
At the edge of the water his dripping snout.

With its reptile-like scales, yonder pine-tree's root
So deep in the mud seems a saurian's foot;
And others, like spiders, are poised unsteady
On the edge of the cliffs where the step grows giddy.

But silence! A shaggy head is shaking
The net-work of twigs, the dry stumps breaking
And laying them low on the heather dense.
'Tis the elk. As mighty and immense
As a mastodon, he now is slaking
His thirst in the swamp. He looks about,
Wild-eyed, at the mountains that shut him in,
While silvery threads are trickling out
Of his panting muzzle and bearded chin.

The haughty pine, as if in fear
Of the light, creeps close to the gravel here.
See the mountains! they rise not in splendid shapes
Of eternal snow, but are squat and gray;
They stand like beggars in thread-bare capes
That are dingy now since many a day.
And had we the murkiest words at hand
They were not dark or gloomy enow
To paint in verse that primeval land
Which is ever preaching: "Renounce, forsake!"
The peasant bites at his black rye cake,
And loose stones rattle beneath his plough.
How gray, how clad in joylessness
Are all of the scenes that meet me!
My native soil, in the ragged dress
Of poverty you greet me.