Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v2.djvu/138

126

And he mourned her all the mornings,

In the morning hours lamented,

Since the time his young wife perished,

Death the fair one had o’ertaken.

In his hand he swung no longer,

Copper handle of his hammer,

Nor his hammer’s clang resounded,

While a month its course was running.

Said the smith, said Ilmarinen,

“Hapless youth, I know no longer,

How to pass my sad existence,

For at night I sit and sleep not,

Always in the night comes sorrow,

And my strength grows weak from trouble.

“All my evenings now are weary,

Sorrowful are all my mornings,

And the nights indeed are dismal,

Worst of all when I am waking.

Grieve I not because ’tis evening,

Sorrow not because ’tis morning,

Trouble not for other seasons;

But I sorrow for my fair one,

And I sorrow for my dear one,

Grieve for her, the dark-browed beauty.

“Sometimes in these times so dismal,

Often in my time of trouble,

Often in my dreams at midnight,

Has my hand felt out at nothing,

And my hand seized only trouble,

As it strayed about in strangeness.”

Thus the smith awhile lived wifeless,

And without his wife grew older,

Wept for two months and for three months,

But upon the fourth month after,

Gold from out the lake he gathered,

Gathered silver from the billows,

And a pile of wood collected,

Nothing short of thirty sledgeloads,

Then he burned the wood to charcoal,

Took the charcoal to the smithy.