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Alone And Repentant (To A Friend Since Deceased)
By Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson
(See Note 9)
A friend I possess, whose whispers just said,
"God's peace!" to my night-watching 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.
Extra Info:
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN IN THE ORIGINAL METERS BY ARTHUR HUBBELL PALMER
Professor of the German Language and Literature In Yale University
Note 9.
ALONE AND REPENTANT. This poem was first printed in 1865, but was
probably written in 1861 or 1862 in Germany or Italy. The friend
was Ivar Bye, whom Björnson had saved from distress and social
ostracism in Christiania before 1857, when Bye went as an actor with
Björnson to the theater in Bergen. He was no great actor but an
unusual man, for whom Björnson had deep respect and warm sympathy.
Björnson described his character and life-experience in the study
"Ivar Bye," first published in 1894, in which he said: "Our
literature possesses a memorial of his way of receiving what was
confided to him. It lies in the poem: 'A friend I possess.' I
wrote it far away from him, - not that he might have it, his name is
not mentioned, and he never had it, but because at that time things
were hard for me."
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