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Winternights Poem

Bare now its limbs, and long its shadow:
while Sol sinks low o'er Sweden's hills,
her light glows through the leafless ash,
whose steadfast roots reach far below.

The barrow-grass has browned with death:
though Freyr had sworn no frost would lie
above the dead, his dearest friends,
still the cold has struck the land.

My thoughts run back to bygone years,
and tales the Northmen told before:
the buried king they called a god,
for harvest-luck they left him gifts.

His bones with earth are blended now,
his earthly kin are kings no more--
though some among the Swedes still trust
his unseen might, the Yngling-father.

I, too, have known his nearness there
and felt the god whom grave-dust hides:
he called me kin and clasped me tight,
he called the land I love my home.

Bare are its limbs and long its shadow--
the ash that wards this wintry land;
Sol's brother lights the barrow-ground,
the sparks of Muspell spread their gleam.

© Ingeborg S. Nordén

Ingeborg´s Norse Heathen Pages       Mirror Site on OoCities.com

Image: Johan Christian Dahl, "Vinter ved Sognefjorden", 1827.

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