Memory

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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!
O happy hours with love and fancy crowned,
     Whose horn of plenty flatteringly subdued
     My heart into a trance, whence, with a rude
And horrid blast, fate came my soul to hound:
Who was the goddess who empowered you all
     Thus to bewitch me? Out of wasting snow
          And lily-leaves her headdress should be made!
Weep, my poor lute! nor on Astræa call.
     She will not smile, nor I, who mourn below,
          Till I, a shade in heaven, clasp her, a shade.

by Erik Johan Stagnelius, translated by Edmund Gosse

Source: Littell's Living Age (1886). Stagnelius, translated by Edmund Gosse. Volume 170, Issue 2200 : Memory.


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