Another poem by the Danish writer Jeppe Aakjær, later set to music by Aksel Agerby

May Night

When wild geese honk on Walpurgis night

who thinks then of going to rest?

With dew-beaded hat you roam out of sight

through fjordland and woods newly dressed.

Way out there gleams so mighty a star

that all of my eye it now fills;

I’m sure that same star I once saw afar

when I gazed o’er my childhood hills.

And the peewit’s cry is borne on the wind,

though longing’s borne farther away.

How bitterly close one’s heart is confined

when the avocet migrates in May!

There’s trickling in grass and cheeping in moss,

the tree-tops twitch out of their slumber;

from the farthermost cape the scent wafts across

of anemones countless in number.

The lonely young lamb on the hill far beyond

can be heard with its plaintive small baa,

and the frogs all croak from puddle and pond,

as if star now were singing to star.

(1916)

To see what Klaus Høeck does with this poem in his collection 'In Nomine', go to here.

To hear a snatch of Agerby's version, go to here (no. 7)