Poem by the writer and railway official Esaias Collin (1866-1906), published in the spring of 1899. Digitised by Project Runeberg.
Now spring is brightening all over Sweden,
and all the buds of the trees swell profusely,
and fairies and lakes break the bonds of ice,
and cheerful, the streams in the moss swell.
It shimmers yellow at the slightest ditch edge,
it shines violet around valley and steep.
Long-distance guests rebuild stay
under the crowns of the roofs in old places,
and over fields, where summer's harvests grow,
the song of the lark is heard from morning to night
and the fishes in the midday sun
on the ground sometimes spawn last year.
That spring, remember? for the last time
of a century, which is about to end.
Next, as spring releases winter's compulsion,
the sun of the new shall dazzle the eye.
What will it look like in old Sweden,
when the twentieth century ends?
Skall, when it springs last time then,
by the same free winds Sweden is cooled?
Shall the same free man occupy the earth,
...that no frenzied plogbill has yet been allowed to approach?
Shall yet round the land the same tongue
be perceived with its Swedish sound of steel?
Do not say that the answer is hidden in the knees of gods!
A higher power is responsible for our fate,
but where a people from the earth is swept away,
it carried within it the seed, however, of death,
and the hedge, where it hath seen wet upon wet,
easily found in depth the red thread of revenge.
So don't play with your future, people of Sweden,
that children and grandchildren may not reap the evil!
It is not enough to be the interpreter of sense,
it is not enough to carry the burden of today -
it was and is not enough for the protection of freedom
to clothe youth in steel and iron.
More than weapons, however, is faith and hope
and the love of the simple customs of the fathers;
for a people that has grown up without a year,
- in spite of everything - the sun of freedom will set,
and he who cannot endure the gentle compulsion of virtue,
will have to carry a heavier burden last time...
Now spring is brightening all around Sweden's land...
If ever its freedom shall perish,
may no spring sun break the bonds of ice
and no bird beat in our puffins,
but winter descend from our mountains
and embed everything in the white paint of death.
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