Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/Home
HOME.
I'm longing for the forest:The pathway in the grasses,The house that on the ness is.What orchards hold such applesDeep-hid from eager spying?What grain, when zephyr dapples,Can breathe so soft a sighing?Where can I better slumberWhen 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 fingersMy fate are grayly weaving?I like a shade have hauntedThe place where memory lingers.Oh, seek not near to hover,Although the doors are fastenedAnd matted strewings coverThe steps, where winds have hastenedAnd dropped the leaves that wither.Bring new-voiced laughter hither.Let new floods from these placesBear 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 banishAnd from our lives would sever,—Say not their colors vanishLike flowers and like grasses,That we from hearts efface themLike dust, when one would clear itFrom 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 isBy walls securely shielded,—Our world—the one thing trulyWe in this world have builded.