O camp of flowers, with poplars girdled round,
O silver spring, beside whose brimming flood
My pensive childhood its Elysium found!
O happy hours by love and fancy crowned,
Whose horn of plenty flatteringly subdued
My heart into a trance, whence, with a rude
And horrid blast, fate came my soul to hound!
Who was the goddess that empowered you all
Thus to bewitch me? Out of wasting snow
And lily-leaves her head-dress should be made!
Weep, my poor lute! nor on Astræa call,
She will not smile, nor I, who mourn below,
Till I, a shade in heaven, clasp her, a shade.
Erik Johan Stagnelius (1793 - 1823) Sweden
Translated by Edmund Gosse
Source: The Sonnets of Europe, ed. by Samuel Waddington. Walter Scott, 1888
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