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On A Wife's Death
By Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson
(See Note 55)
With death's dark eye acquainted she had been made ere this,
When to her son, her first-born, she gave the farewell kiss,
And when afar she hastened beside her mother's bed,
It followed all her faring with warning fraught and dread;
It filled her with foreboding when standing by the bier:
More sheaves to gather hopeth the harvester austere.
So soon she saw her husband, that man of strength, succumb,
She said with sorrow stricken: « I knew that it would come!"
She thought that he was chosen by God from earth to go,
Would check, her hands upthrusting, the harsh behest of woe;
And with her slender body, too weak for such a strife,
Would ward her gallant consort, - and gave for him her life.
She smiled, serene and blissful, as death's dark eye she braved;
Her sacrifice was given, her heart's proud hero saved.
Our love and admiration lifted a starry dome
Of happiness above her in life's last hour of gloam,
And snow-white pure she passed then to her eternal home.
Such tender love and holy to heaven's bounds can bear
The souls that it embraces in sacrifice and prayer.
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 55.
ON A WIFE's DEATH. In memory of Queen Louisa (1828-1871), consort of
King Karl XV of Sweden and Norway. A princess of the Netherlands,
whose mother was the sister of Emperor William I, she was married in
1850o, and died March 30, 1871. She bore a son on December 4, 1852,
who died March 13, 1854. In November, 1870, she was called to her
dying mother in The Hague. Karl XV died in September, 1872, after
several years of precarious health. Queen Louisa was an unassuming,
truly noble woman of deeply religious feeling and large benevolence.
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