Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/The Slumbering Sister
THE SLUMBERING SISTER.
Though through the door the morning sun glows red,Yet she, our cherished one, whom all night longWe lulled to sleep with flute-notes and with song Has not awakened. Is she dead?
Stifled by incense fumes, behold!She lies here,—incense that our love of oldBurnt to her as around some holy grave.Without avail we sought to deck her formIn the fair robe her sister's limbs made warm;Cold, it slips down, the garment that we gave, And leaves exposed her lifeless frame. She's dead, lo! Sweden was her name.
'Tis in a house of mourning that we guest,And funeral ale 's the drink with which we feast.Deafly she slumbers, chin upon her breast,The while her sister, Norway, in the westRises at daybreak. Hear her song ascending!She hails the new day till we all have wonderedAt her brave words. From hundred mouths to hundredThrough distant regions they re-echo still. But she whom we love sleeps here chill.
Let us depart and no more waste our youthIn empty funeral speech and threnody. Come, break your flutes to pieces on your knee.Who would play music to the dead, forsooth!We do not lean a hot and feverish headUpon a breast that death makes hard and chill.No, in life's turmoil we'd forget the deadFor whom of old our hearts with love could thrill.We seek our living at the stranger's gate.Men ask: "What has your home-land done of late?Is not her fame the goal of your ambition,Her strife, her toil, in small things as in great?" Our silence tells our sharp contrition.
How empty year succeeds on empty year,How comfort palls, wherever we may roam,If our life passes far away from home!But of our flutes we build for her a bierAnd lift her up from where, supine, she lay,Whispering softly meanwhile at her earThat in the world already dawn shows clear.Her borrowed garments then we cast away.Remorsefully we tramp out with our treadThe incense, bearing her with songs instead Out of the stuffy alcove deepUnto the threshold where the dawn wind blows,And the first light tinges her cheek with rose. She is not dead; she does but sleep.