Erik Johan Stagnelius Poems

Friend, in the desolate time, when your soul is enshrouded in darkness
When, in a deep abyss, memory and feeling die out,
Intellect timidly gropes among shadowy forms and illusions
Heart can no longer sigh, eye is unable to weep;
...

The evening is festooned with golden clouds
the fairies dance in the meadow
and the leaf-crowned Nacken
plays his fiddle in the silvery brook.
...

O camp of flowers, with poplars girdled round,
Gray guardians of life's soft and purple bud!
O silver spring, beside whose brimming flood
My pensive childhood its Elysium found!
...

Deep slumber hung o'er sea and hill and plain;
With pale pink cheek fresh from her watery caves
Slow rose the moon out of the midnight waves,
Like Venus out of ocean born again.
...

Up through the ruins of my earthly dreams
I catch the stars of immortality;
What store of joy can lurk in heaven for me?
What other hope feed those celestial gleams?
...

O camp of flowers, with poplars girdled round,
The guardians of life's soft and purple bud!
O silver spring, beside whose brimming flood
My dreaming childhood its Elysium found!
...