Finland
Into your clefts you have received the poet, granite rocks of Finland, eternal granites, guardian heroes of the land of the glacial crown. With the lyre he is among you. His greeting is a greeting to the masses of the rock, contemporaneous with the world. Like them may he for ever be unchangeable!
How wondrously everything about me charms my eye: there with its immeasurable waters the sea is welded with the heavens; here the dreamy pine-forest has descended with heavy tread from the mountain rock, and mirrors itself in the smooth waters! 'T is late: day is out, but the vault of heaven is bright; night comes without darkness upon the Finnish cliffs, and only for its own adornment it leads out upon the horizon a useless choir of diamond stars. This is the country of Odin's children, — the distant nations of the storm! This is the cradle of their restless days, consecrated to famous warrings!
Silent is the sounding shield, not heard the voice of the skald; the flaming oak is extinguished; the stormy wind has scattered the solemn calls, the sons know not the exploits of their fathers, and prone in the dust lie the prostrate forms of their gods, — and all around me is deep silence. O ye who carried war from shore to shore, where are ye, heroes of the north? Your vestige has disappeared from your native land. Do ye press your grieving eyes against the cliffs and swim, a misty host, up in the clouds? Do ye? Give me answer, listen to my voice calling to you in the silence of the night. Mighty sons of these threatening, eternal cliffs! How were ye severed from your rocky fatherland? Why are ye sad? Why have I read upon your melancholy faces the smile of chiding? And ye have hid yourselves in the abode of shades! And time has not spared your names! What are our exploits, what the glory of our days, what is our windy tribe? Oh, everything will in its turn disappear in the abyss of years! For all there is one law, — the law of annihilation. In all I hear the mysterious greeting of sought-for forgetfulness.
But I, — for life's sake loving life in ingloriousness, — shall I with careless soul tremble before destiny? Though not eternal in time, I am eternal for myself: does not the storm of time speak to imagination alone? The moment belongs to me, as I belong to the moment. What care I for past or future races? Not for them do I strum the soft-voiced strings: though not listened to, I am sufficiently rewarded with sounds for sounds, and with dreams for dreams.
How wondrously everything about me charms my eye: there with its immeasurable waters the sea is welded with the heavens; here the dreamy pine-forest has descended with heavy tread from the mountain rock, and mirrors itself in the smooth waters! 'T is late: day is out, but the vault of heaven is bright; night comes without darkness upon the Finnish cliffs, and only for its own adornment it leads out upon the horizon a useless choir of diamond stars. This is the country of Odin's children, — the distant nations of the storm! This is the cradle of their restless days, consecrated to famous warrings!
Silent is the sounding shield, not heard the voice of the skald; the flaming oak is extinguished; the stormy wind has scattered the solemn calls, the sons know not the exploits of their fathers, and prone in the dust lie the prostrate forms of their gods, — and all around me is deep silence. O ye who carried war from shore to shore, where are ye, heroes of the north? Your vestige has disappeared from your native land. Do ye press your grieving eyes against the cliffs and swim, a misty host, up in the clouds? Do ye? Give me answer, listen to my voice calling to you in the silence of the night. Mighty sons of these threatening, eternal cliffs! How were ye severed from your rocky fatherland? Why are ye sad? Why have I read upon your melancholy faces the smile of chiding? And ye have hid yourselves in the abode of shades! And time has not spared your names! What are our exploits, what the glory of our days, what is our windy tribe? Oh, everything will in its turn disappear in the abyss of years! For all there is one law, — the law of annihilation. In all I hear the mysterious greeting of sought-for forgetfulness.
But I, — for life's sake loving life in ingloriousness, — shall I with careless soul tremble before destiny? Though not eternal in time, I am eternal for myself: does not the storm of time speak to imagination alone? The moment belongs to me, as I belong to the moment. What care I for past or future races? Not for them do I strum the soft-voiced strings: though not listened to, I am sufficiently rewarded with sounds for sounds, and with dreams for dreams.
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