Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/Childhood Friends
CHILDHOOD FRIENDS.
One evening the Hall folk during a stormTook a pack of old pictures as cards and playedRound a plate on which toffy and apples were laid.The stoves with shut damper were glowing warm,In eddying flakes the snow was flurriedAgainst the panes, that were coated with frost,No jingle told that friends or the postThrough the deepening drifts of the roadway hurried.Three ancient sisters were heirs of the place,Who now, as in their grandmother's days,Shuffled the pack in the lamplight's glowAnd dealt out the people they used to know.With every picture they got for their handsThey would softly twitch at their shawls a while,Would speak of old times and simper and smile,And shake their bonnets with ribbon bands.A Lieutenant von Platen they used as a jack,A homely Miss Dubb was "old maid" of the pack.
The cards of the eldest would slip unduly.She heard her sisters conversing coollyOf bygone days—and night came on,But she sat with them silent, as if alone.The poodle slunk with an anxious whineFrom her lap, then sniffed and with fixèd stareLooked up at the vacant easy-chair,Which, they say, with a beast is a certain sign It sees a dead man in his wonted place,Where by night as by day is but empty space.
She was sunk in thought.—With a far-off gaze,As one who hears an old song to a zither,She recalled a friend of her childhood days,Who had left her. They played as two larks that twitter.She was older a year but as wild as he.They leapt into brooks amid splashing water,And hand in hand they would wander freeOn the darkening heath. She saw that he thought herToo old, wishing: "Were you but small and were youAfraid when we hark to the fir-trees sighing,So that I over gate and stile must bear youAnd through the bushes where snakes are lying!You were born ten summers too soon for me."—So he thought as he walked by her moodily.Then quickly as hands of masons, plying.The vaults and spires of a palace might rear.They built up their lives with day and year.When he had reached spring, her summer was near.She sprinkled beans in the porridge-vesselAnd pounded cinnamon with her pestleAnd set it out on the family board,While he thought: "How soon the rose-tree is ladenWith bloom! You should still be a little maiden Who'd hark on my knee to my every wordOf the wide, strange world my vision had storedFrom tales that in painter's ink were set."—Then down on their hearts there snowed regret,For she understood and suffered no less.They went to the lake and in deep distressSat down with hand to forehead and wept;But they changed the rings from their fingers then,For well did they know that never againCould they give to another the rings they kept.
He went on his way, his spurs he earnedIn distant countries where battle burned.When, blackened with smoke, his horse in a lather,He led on his men, he was gay and erect.But when in the noisy night they would gatherAround the camp-fire, forest-decked,Each one by a girl with a flask at his lips,Though their coats were bloody and shot into strips;In silent gloom apart from the crewHe sat, until, as if roused anewBy a bell, he recklessly sprang from the grass;Then, wilder than all, to his mouth he drewEach Circe or cluster of grapes he would pass.The minutes in Time's great hour-glassMore quickly slipped. His cheek was aflame,More young with every year he became,A rebel, who at seventy stillMight wait the first wound of his foeman's skillWhich furrows the outer bastion's frame. He moved in a tumult of glad alarm,But his heart was asleep on his one love's arm.One night, when the rain was pouring down,All scratched and heated, he clambered outOf a countess's window, and gazed aboutAnd thought as he looked at the town:
"When a daughter lies to her mother, we sayLove's vaunted sun approaches the prime.When she lies to him she has sworn to obey,Her heart feels love for the second time.Like a sneaking thief with skeleton keysLove breaks through all vows and promises.There is not in love one man of honor.Would you see the worst scoundrels that ever drankAt breast, then behold them rank on rank,When the whispering couples beneath Love's bannerGo by, each pair with fetters that clank,As in long parade through the streets they walkWith insult and lie and slanderous talk;For merely to watch how lovers gloatEnkindles in others the mean and the low.The sage, whether clad in toga or coat,Closes his window and laughs at the show.Next to the waiter and the woman's physicianThe lover's the man that merits derision.Wise married man, let your blood be chill,And leave him to play his vaudeville,For the horn he stealthily gives you to wearIs less droll than the ass's ears be must bear Himself when he sips enchanted ofThe cup where you sated your youth's glad ire.Where in all the befuddling joust of loveAre the noble raptures men sing to the lyre?These lovers will start if you rap on the doorLike a school of fishes you scare with an oar.Had love the worth of two rhymes in it,Don Juan, who laughs as he leans on his blade,Would not be the one man who boldly flayedThe avenger's back with his scourging wit.Is thirst a fine thing because throats will thirst?When the amorous poets, of liars the first,Have set at the window the doll they admire,With its rattle they lure the next passer-by,For never doll danced before lover's eyeBut it wakened a thrill of selfish desire.Nay, to what likeness does love aspire?It is but a little scampering rat,That jumps in your way as you're going to bed,And flies behind plank and door at your tread,And because it slinks off in such mortal dread'Tis a mark for the stone of each beggar brat.Think not that Love hides a dream that is fraughtWith cradles or any such worthy thought;He's a tippler who in his secret lairPulls his cap down and whispers: "There's steps on the stair—Don't pause but toss off the glass without heed."The animal-lover, who cuts the corkAnd hook from the fishing-rod, who will feed His sweetheart's tiny linnet with seed,Will none the less look askance at the stork.When love goes to sleep, our souls first moveTo strains of deep feeling that will not pass.Is a mother not more than a toying lass?But the child she holds is the corpse of love.On the mount of the gods, where in vain their liege isOpposing to time his broken ægis,With gray-haired Bacchus near by, we seeIn never-changing stupidityFat Venus, who sits like a country girlAs she fastens a ribbon around a curl.I furthermore count as a grievous faultThat blondest of hair which she thus attires.She never glows, she only perspires;For blondes are as bread that is baked without salt,And their table-talk is inept and stale.Then black hair, too, conceals without failA faithless lust for daggers and death;And no dream could portray under bridal wreathThe hair that God gave the horse for his tail.But soft chestnut-brown, where the sun-beams dapple.Whose tints with the tones of Correggio strive,To such, O Iduna, I give thine apple,That's the hair to bewitch any man alive.In brief, on dazzling shoulders hangsThe blondest hair ever curled in bangs,Or twined with gold and sent for a drive.She pats on the cheek the first groom she meets And goes with his smell to the emperor's sheets.Don't try her with thoughts, for she'll puff them away;Take your gloves off and smack her buttocks in play,Then wink and step on her toes a bit,That's the wooing that suits Lady Venus's wit.But if evil thoughts in her mind shall flow,She'll poison the dart on Cupid's bow.It is only to children, who sportively bearHer apples and doves while they dream of her blisses,That the smirking deceiver appears as fairWith thirst-cooling clusters of baneful kisses.Yet there's no stout oak of kingliest frameBut the whistling hail will shatter its crest;The hurt man will dig his nails in his breast,And curse, as I do, her might and her name.He alone on earth wins a great careerWho, lost in thought, has passed by the dame.How pallid her failing lamp will appear,When the love your own effort has brought to birthFlings arms of flame around heaven and earth!"
So he spoke, while with dripping hatOver swimming highway and field he strode.At length on the grass in his tent he sat.Determined to fly by whatever roadHis horse should choose, on that very night.But the deepest wood and the swiftest riverAfford not oblivion's refuge everFor the self-doomed man who has taken to flight. When he jumped down one evening with clattering swordTo the doorstep of home from the robes of his sledge,He saw by the lantern's light that pouredOn her as she stood by the privet hedgeAmid full-grown sisters, that on her faceThe claws of time had been digging their trace.
He looked and he looked, as sad and stillAs is a cloudless October morn,When you note how on floor and window-sillThe lilac-tree shadow is faint and forlorn,A thin net of cords and knots, though brightThe sun on the pane is shedding his light.He clasped her as hard as in time of wreckTwo drunkards in terror embrace on the deck,For she was still the one love of his heart.As, when children, they turned with a frightened startOn the bridge by the cliff and listened longTo the water's subterranean surge.They heard now afar the threatening songOf coming fate's inescapable urge.
The holy wedding-day soon approached,When spiggots were hammered and casks were broached.The hop-wine into the pitchers had raced,The birches along the corridor placed Like a guard of honor were stiffly standing.Fat fowls under the axe had bled.Each floor was leaf-strewn, and rose-leaves were spreadBy the sisters from sieves on each stair and landing.For the drive to church the waggon was woundWith veils that had ever been saved by allThe maidens whose heads had been myrtle-crownedThis fifty years past up at the Hall.But alone in her room through all the worryShe left her sisters to toil and hurry.Each hour's time held a life's distress.On her lap lay her sable wedding-dress,For a garment of white beseems but the young.At the heaven of fate with clouds overhungShe stared, while a storm in her bosom held sway;She saw there but gloom that never was lighted.In her grief she sat, like an autumn dayWhere flowers are left, but all of them blighted.Yet when eager across the threshold he stepped,She quietly took his hands in her ownAnd told him of all that, silent, alone.Through years of pain she had secretly wept.Then a chilly glint fell on everything,And across the black dress that lay on her kneeShe tremblingly gave him back the ring,While she spoke so low that near by on a treeA sparrow tranquilly plumed her wing:
"My love is my life, my all upon earth,And yours but the warmth of the home-cheering hearth,Where you'll shiver soon at the weaning blaze.I should have stayed on in my springtime days.We must not be bound by riveted linksTill each hates the other, and moans and shrinks.I beg you forget me. I close my breastAnd only long for the sleep of the grave.But I know that my spirit is still possessedOf a chain that holds you at my behestWith the memory-links that our springtime gave,Which are set with jewels of deeper glowThan love with its gleam as from hell below.Whenever you seek to give to anotherThe ring that now from my hand is warm,You will stand there pale, your eyes you will cover,Then stunned and waking you'll check your arm.Between two eternities we have met—And we part—That you're gone I may think sincerely;But it's only an error, illusion merely.The brooding man holds his compasses yetOn the circle in which his thoughts are boundAnd like wolves go anxiously round and round;Great men of the day, a contented set,In street-corner conference go and come;New friends at his heart are knocking thereAnd guests tramp up the snow-covered stairTo be welcomed by him on the porch of his home— They are all but as painted figures that roamOver ceiling and wall through a great hall's space,Where we two as ever stand face to face.My fate with your fate is interwrought,And thousands must fight the fight we have fought,Where love attains more than love can give.The one whom you love as long as you live,The one who has gained your every thought,Is old and faded; you never canGive her the love that love seeks to own.You shall wander about as a homeless man,Shall reap but thistles where flowers you've sown.But ever your longing heart shall grieveIn its wish to love her and her alone,As birds might love when their glad wings cleaveThe air all aglow with the summer's fire,And your heart shall be wasted with vain desire."
It was thus that she spoke the day he went,And she fell in a faint as his wheels rolled away.Now rising, above the side-board she leantWhere the Christmas tarts and cookies lay.
That evening she dealt them every oneTo the manor servants, who when it was doneWere filled with surprise by the kitchen boardAt the prodigal food and candle-light.Her sisters alone caught the whispered word:"My dearest memory makes its flightThrough the storm to guest in our house to-night, It has come over dusky waters and landsAnd has laid on my hair two blessing hands."
The Hall soon slept, the panes no more shone,But, deep in a problem that baffles all skill,Awake in the arm-chair, hushed and still,A little parched woman was sitting alone.