Land of Legends

O loveliest land!
where hair shall not whiten, where time stays its hand,
where sun shall not scorch nor the tempest-spray sting,
where Autumn embraces the blossoming Spring,
where evetide and morning dance both to one tune
in the brightness of noon.

Most blissful of lands!
where time-glass runs never with tears nor with sand,
where nothing is wanting that heart might hold dear,
where that only lacks which gave suffering here!
Each human soul seeks with a longing so sore
your welcoming shore!

You long-promised land!
foreshadowed in momingtide’s mirror-bright strand,
when children perchance glimpse your image serene
and dream they may find you where forest is green,
to share with the flowers and rushes, in play,
their sorrowfree day.

Ah, transient dream!
eternity’s isle glimpsed from time’s rolling stream;
joy’s shrine, from this valley of weeping and dread;
the demigod’s life, from this hall of the dead:
you vanish - and few will still trust lies at hand
the living soul’s land.

Ah, fickle, false dream!
you shimmering bubble on time’s rolling stream!
In vain will the poet, with tongue or with pen,
from glimmering likenesses shape you again:
when likeness is closest, then innocents cry
to hold what they spy.

You spellbinding dream!
the glimpse of eternity’s pearl in time’s stream!
You mock the poor wretch who so vainly aspires
to paint or to carve what the heart most desires
and hails as immortal what withers and dies
as sure as time flies.

O Spirit of Love!
Your radiant hand, stretched from heaven above
to earth’s realm of clay, like a child let me hold.
It touches our eyes with its fingers like gold:
and in the blue rises, yond sounding sea-strand,
that loveliest land!

O heavenly name!
which, would we embrace you, enfolds us the same.
Unspotted, the Spirit can thus touch this clay,
restoring the dry leaf from death and decay.
O deep let me, creature of dust, bend the knee,
that God may me see.

O Faith, wondrous Faith!
that high overarches the deep, staith to staith,
deriding the ice-drift that gains on the strand,
from the home of the dead to the living soul’s land.
Sit lowlier here with me, highly-born guest,
as pleases you best.

O Hope, light of wing!
Godbrother! reborn in the font’s holy spring!
For many a journey to land over sea,
for good news, for comfort you granted so free,
allow me to thank you, that joy I still store
when hope is no more!

Love, first of three!
calm spring whence all strength, as a river, flows free!
called ‘Father’ by him who unshackles our chains;
one spark of your spirit our soul-strength sustains;
your realm is where death’s taunting voice is struck dumb
-O, thy kingdom come!

Our Father, what grace!
that fain would be throned in this low earthen place,
this temple the Spirit has raised in Christ’s name
in each human breast, with its altar aflame,
a heaven-lit dwelling so secretly won
for you and your Son.

O Christendom’s Way!
you bring to our hearts what no worldling can say,
what dimly we glimpse with an eye young and pure
yet lives in us truly; we feel it for sure!
“My land” declares Life “is both here and above:
wherever dwells Love!”

De Levendes Land (The Land of the Living) - N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

Translation by © S. A. J. Bradley, 2002