Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/316

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And the cleaning of the planking,

And the scrubbing of the flooring,

Leave the fields where leap the reindeer,

And the woods where run the lynxes,

And the wastes where flock the wild geese,

And the woods where birds are perching.

“Now indeed I am departing,

All the rest I leave behind me;

In the folds of nights of autumn,

On the thin ice of the springtime,

On the ice I leave no traces,

On the slippery ice no footprints,

From my dress no thread upon it,

Nor in snow my skirt’s impression.

“If I should return in future,

And again my home revisit,

Mother hears my voice no longer,

Nor my father heeds my weeping,

Though I’m sobbing in the corner,

Or above their heads am speaking,

For the young grass springs already

And the juniper is sprouting

O’er the sweet face of my mother,

And the cheeks of her who bore me.

“If I should return in future

To the wide-extended homestead,

I shall be no more remembered,

Only by two little objects.

At the lowest hedge are hedge-bands,

At the furthest field are hedge-stakes,

These I fixed when I was little,

As a girl with twigs I bound them.

“But my mother’s barren heifer,

Unto which I carried water,

And which as a calf I tended,

She will low to greet my coming,

From the dunghill of the farmyard,

Or the wintry fields around it;

She will know me, when returning,

As the daughter of the household.