Famous poem by the Norwegian Romantic poet Henrik Wergeland

The girl in the dissection room

– – Yes, it is her! Oh light here, quick!

Let not the knife yet even flick

                  across this poor girl’s heart!

Oh, what cruel irony does glow

in this lamp’s gaze that stares down so

                  on dead pain set apart.

So cold, yet when it breathed did not

the proud world gaze at it a lot?

                  And bold eyes soon sliced through

the veil of golden dreams that she

the poor girl against poverty

                  wore when as child she grew.

Like flower frozen in the ice

this cheek bears traits that in a trice

                  should be well-known to me.

For childhood games that brought me joy,

before I was no longer boy,

                  – Oh surely it was she.

She lived just opposite from us,

of humble birth, like in its moss

                  the roof’s heartsease could thrive.

Fine folk could hardly contemplate

that blood so fair and delicate

                  from paupers could derive.

Ah, many a face as this saw I

like monthly rose’s splendour die,

                  as butterfly-dust brief!

Fate’s hand too firmly must have grasped,

and sin’s trace to such lives have clasped

                  like snail’s slime on the leaf.

(1 January 1837)