Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/273

Runo XXII]

Now the longed-for sledge is ready,

Eager mount the sledge so gaudy,

Travel quickly to the village,

Quickly speeding on thy journey.

“Hast thou never, youthful maiden,

On both sides surveyed the question,

Looked beyond the present moment,

When the bargain was concluded?

All thy life must thou be weeping,

And for many years lamenting,

How thou left’st thy father’s household,

And thy native land abandoned,

From beside thy tender mother,

From the home of she who bore thee.

“O the happy life thou leddest,

In this household of thy father!

Like a wayside flower thou grewest,

Or upon the heath a strawberry,

Waking up to feast on butter,

Milk, when from thy bed arising,

Wheaten-bread, from couch upstanding,

From thy straw, the fresh-made butter,

Or, if thou could eat no butter,

Strips of pork thou then could’st cut thee.

“Never yet wast thou in trouble,

Never hadst thou cause to worry,

To the fir-trees tossed thou trouble,

Worry to the stumps abandoned,

Care to pine-trees in the marshlands,

And upon the heaths the birch-trees.

Like a leaflet thou wast fluttering,

As a butterfly wast fluttering,

Berry-like in native soil,

Or on open ground a raspberry.

“But thy home thou now art leaving,

To another home thou goest,

To another mother’s orders,

To the household of a stranger.

Different there from here thou’lt find it

In another house ’tis different;