Monday 9 August 2010

Another poem by the Danish writer Jeppe Aakjær, later set to music by Aksel Agerby

May Night

When wild geese honk on Walpurgis night
who thinks then of going to rest?
With dew-beaded hat you roam out of sight
through fjordland and woods newly dressed.

Way out there gleams so mighty a star
that all of my eye it now fills;
I’m sure that same star I once saw afar
when I gazed o’er my childhood hills.

And the peewit’s cry is borne on the wind,
though longing’s borne farther away.
How bitterly close one’s heart is confined
when the avocet migrates in May!

There’s trickling in grass and cheeping in moss,
the tree-tops twitch out of their slumber;
from the farthermost cape the scent wafts across
of anemones countless in number.

The lonely young lamb on the hill far beyond
can be heard with its plaintive small baa,
and the frogs all croak from puddle and pond,
as if star now were singing to star.

(1916)


To see what Klaus Høeck does with this poem in his collection 'In Nomine', go to here.

To hear a snatch of Agerby's version, go to here (no. 7)

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