Poem of the Week, week 37: Henrik Ibsen "She Has Left Us!"

SHE HAS LEFT US!

Our guests we followed,
our last, to the gateway;
the night wind swallowed
our partings straightway.

A ten-fold drearness
the house in its fences,
where sweet-toned nearness
had drowned my senses.

A party, merely,
then darkness bereft us;
a visit, merely, –
and now she has left us.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

Translated by John Northam in Ibsen’s Poems in versions by John Northam, Norwegian University Press, Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Tromsø, 1986, p. 46.

See the poem in Norwegian

Poem of the Week

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