Mountain Life by Mats Størkersen

MOUNTAIN LIFE

by: Henrik Ibsen

N summer dusk the valley lies With far-flung shadow veil; A cloud-sea

laps the precipice Before the evening gale: The welter of the cloud-waves

grey Cuts off from keenest sight The glacier, looking out by day O’er all

the district, far away, And crowned with golden light.

But o’er the smouldering cloud-wrack’s flow, Where gold and amber

kiss, Stands up the archipelago, A home of shining peace. The mountain

eagle seems to sail A ship far seen at even; And over all a serried pale Of

peaks, like giants ranked in mail, Fronts westward threatening heaven.

Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays, Half shadow, half aflame; The deep, still

vision of her gaze Was never word to name. She names it not herself, nor knows.

What goal my be its will; While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows.

It bears her where the sunset glows, Or, maybe, further still.

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds. Where close the glaciers jut; Too soon the

snowstorm’s cloak enfolds. Stone byre and pine-log hut. Then wilt thou ply with

hearth ablaze. The winter’s well-worn tasks; -- But spin thy wool with cheerful

face: One sunset in the mountain pays. For all their winter asks.

Emily Dickinson. Complete Poems

(1924).

Part Four: Time and Eternity

The sun kept setting, setting still;

No hue of afternoon

Upon the village I perceived,—

From house to house ’t was noon.

The dusk kept dropping, dropping still;

No dew upon the grass,

But only on my forehead stopped,

And wandered in my face.

My feet kept drowsing, drowsing

still,

My fingers were awake;

Yet why so little sound myself

Unto my seeming make?

How well I knew the light before!

I could not see it now.

T is dying, I am doing; but

I ’m not afraid to know.

At That Hour

by James Joyce

At that hour when all things have

repose,

O lonely watcher of the skies,

Do you hear the night wind and the

sighs

Of harps playing unto Love to unclose

The pale gates of sunrise?

Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,

Whose way in heaven is aglow

At that hour when soft lights come

and go,

Soft sweet music in the air above

And in the earth below.

Poem by Philip Levine.

An Abandoned Factory, Detroit

The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing

stands,

An iron authority against the snow,

And this grey monument to common sense

Resists the weather.

Fears of idle hands,

Of protest, men in league, and of the slow

Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.

Beyond, through broken windows one can see

Where the great presses paused between their strokes

And thus remain, in air suspended, caught

In the sure margin of eternity.

The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the

spokes

Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought,

And estimates the loss of human power,

Experienced and slow, the loss of years,

The gradual decay of dignity.

Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour;

Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears

Which might have served to grind their eulogy.

Bjornstjerne Bjornson.Alone And Repentant

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.

Jowl and listen lad (Old West Virginia coal miner song, unknown

author).

Jowl, Jowl and listen lad

Ye’ll hear the coalface working

There’s many a marrer missing lad

Because he wadn’t listen lad.

Me Father always used to say

Pit work’s more than hewing

You’ve got to coax the coal along

And not be riving and chewing

The deputy crawls from flat to flat

The putter rams the chummins

And the man at the face must kna his place

Like a mother kna’s her young un.