Showing posts with label Henrik Ibsen's With a Water-Lily poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henrik Ibsen's With a Water-Lily poem. Show all posts

Thursday, July 29, 2010

WITH A WATER LILY

By Henrik Ibsen   1863


SEE, dear, what thy lover brings;
'Tis the flower with the white wings.
Buoyed upon the quiet stream
In the spring it lay adream.


Homelike to bestow this guest,
Lodge it, dear one, in thy breast;
There its leaves the secret keep
Of a wave both still and deep.


Child, beware the tarn-fed stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though the sprite pretends to sleep,
And above the lilies peep.


Child, thy bosom is the stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though above the lilies peep,
And the sprite pretends to sleep.

English translation by Fydell Edmund Garrett is reprinted 
from the Westminster Gazette of May 6, 1903.


Seeking summer's beauty. Sharing Scandinavian history. 
Posting an intertwining of the two here Along Life's Road.