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Mountain Life by Mats Størkersen
MOUNTAIN LIFE by: Henrik Ibsen N summer dusk the valley lies With far-flung shadow veil; A cloud-sea laps the precipice Before the evening gale: The welter of the cloud-waves grey Cuts off from keenest sight The glacier, looking out by day O’er all the district, far away, And crowned with golden light. But o’er the smouldering cloud-wrack’s flow, Where gold and amber kiss, Stands up the archipelago, A home of shining peace. The mountain eagle seems to sail A ship far seen at even; And over all a serried pale Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail, Fronts westward threatening heaven.
Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays, Half shadow, half aflame; The deep, still vision of her gaze Was never word to name. She names it not herself, nor knows. What goal my be its will; While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows. It bears her where the sunset glows, Or, maybe, further still. Too brief, thy life on highland wolds. Where close the glaciers jut; Too soon the snowstorm’s cloak enfolds. Stone byre and pine-log hut. Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze. The winter’s well-worn tasks; -- But spin thy wool with cheerful face: One sunset in the mountain pays. For all their winter asks.
Emily Dickinson. Complete Poems (1924). Part Four: Time and Eternity The sun kept setting, setting still; No hue of afternoon Upon the village I perceived,— From house to house ’t was noon. The dusk kept dropping, dropping still; No dew upon the grass, But only on my forehead stopped, And wandered in my face.
My feet kept drowsing, drowsing still, My fingers were awake; Yet why so little sound myself Unto my seeming make? How well I knew the light before! I could not see it now. T is dying, I am doing; but I ’m not afraid to know.
At That Hour by James Joyce At that hour when all things have repose, O lonely watcher of the skies, Do you hear the night wind and the sighs Of harps playing unto Love to unclose The pale gates of sunrise? Play on, invisible harps, unto Love, Whose way in heaven is aglow At that hour when soft lights come and go, Soft sweet music in the air above And in the earth below.
Poem by Philip Levine. An Abandoned Factory, Detroit The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, An iron authority against the snow, And this grey monument to common sense Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands, Of protest, men in league, and of the slow Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence. Beyond, through broken windows one can see Where the great presses paused between their strokes And thus remain, in air suspended, caught In the sure margin of eternity. The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought, And estimates the loss of human power, Experienced and slow, the loss of years, The gradual decay of dignity. Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour; Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears Which might have served to grind their eulogy.
Bjornstjerne Bjornson. Alone And Repentant A friend I possess, whose whispers just said, “God’s peace!” to my nightwatching mind. When daylight is gone and darkness brings dread, He ever the way can find. He utters no word to smite and to score; He, too, has known sin and its grief. He heals with his look the place that is sore, And stays till I have relief. He takes for his own the deed that is such That sorrows of heart increase. He cleanses the wound with so gentle a touch, The pain must give way to peace. He followed each hope the heights that would scale Reproached not a hapless descent. He stands here just now, so mild, but so pale; -- In time he shall know what it meant.
Jowl and listen lad (Old West Virginia coal miner song, unknown author). Jowl, Jowl and listen lad Ye’ll hear the coalface working There’s many a marrer missing lad Because he wadn’t listen lad. Me Father always used to say Pit work’s more than hewing You’ve got to coax the coal along And not be riving and chewing The deputy crawls from flat to flat The putter rams the chummins And the man at the face must kna his place Like a mother kna’s her young un.