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(From Lars)
ON curtained eyes, and bosoms warm with rest, | |
| On slackened fingers and unburdened feet, | |
| On limbs securer slumber held from toil, | |
| While nimble spirits of the busy blood | |
| Renewed their suppleness, yet filled the trance | 5 |
| With something happy which was less than dream, | |
| The sun of Sabbath rose. Two hours, afar, | |
| Behind the wintry peaks of Justedal, | |
| Unmarked, he climbed; then, pausing on the crest | |
| Of Fille Fell, he gathered up his beams | 10 |
| Dissolved in warmer blue, and showered them down | |
| Between the mountains; through the falling vale, | |
| On Ulvik’s cottages and orchard trees. | |
| And one by one the chimneys breathed; the sail | |
| That loitered lone along the misty fiord | 15 |
| Flashed like a star, and filled with fresher wind; | |
| The pasturing steers, dispersed on grassy slopes, | |
| Raised heads of wonder over hedge and wall | |
| To call, unanswered, the belated cows; | |
| And ears that would not hear, or heard in dreams, | 20 |
| The lark’s alarum over idle fields, | |
| And lids, still sweetly shut, that else unclosed | |
| At touch of daybreak, yielded to the day. * * * * * | |
| They set themselves to climb the stubborn fell | |
| By stony stairs that left the fields below, | 25 |
| And ceased, far up, against the nearer blue. | |
| But lightly sprang the maids; and where the slides | |
| Of ice ground smooth the slanting planes of rock, | |
| Strong arms drew up and firm feet steadied theirs. | |
| Here lent the juniper a prickly hand, | 30 |
| And there they grasped the heather’s frowsy hair, | |
| While jest and banter made the giddy verge | |
| Secure as orchard-turf; and none but showed | |
| The falcon’s eye that guides the hunter’s foot, | |
| Till o’er their flushed and breathless faces struck | 35 |
| The colder ether; on the crest they stood, | |
| And sheltered vale and ever-winding fiord | |
| Sank into gulfs of shadow, while afar | |
| To eastward many a gleaming tooth of snow | |
Cut the full round of sky.
“Why, look you, now!” | 40 |
| Cried one; “the fiord is bare as threshing-floor | |
| When winter ’s over: what ’s become of Per?” | |
| “And what of Lars?” asked Ragnil, with a glance | |
| At Brita’s careless face; “can he have climbed | |
| The Evil Pass, and crossed the thundering foss, | 45 |
| His nearest way?” As clear as blast of horn | |
| There came a cry, and on the comb beyond | |
| They saw the sparkle of a scarlet vest. | |
| Then, like the echo of a blast of horn, | |
| A moment later, fainter and subdued, | 50 |
| A second cry; and far to left appeared | |
| A form that climbed and leaped, and nearer strove. | |
| And Harald, Anders Ericssen, and Nils | |
| Set their three voices to accordant pitch | |
| And shouted one wild call athwart the blue, | 55 |
| Until it seemed to quiver: as they ceased | |
| The maids began, and, moving onward, gave | |
| Strong music: all the barren summits rang. | |
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