Well-known midsummer poem by the Danish writer Ulf Hoffmann

Sweet is Denmark’s fragrance

at midsummer’s coming

feel the light, scents, humming

almost whisper: Stay!

Starlings, thrushes, hear them,

joy will soon draw near them,

new life come to cheer them,

though the leaves soon must,

all too soon be dust.

Dust and dust and dust.

Sweet is Denmark’s fragrance

in midsummer’s night now,

dream that you’re eighteen, how

your hair’s moist with dew.

Elders lining pathways

and a shawm’s glad forays:

would you own them always

ere all disappears

for how many years?

Years and years and years.

Sweet is Denmark’s fragrance

in midsummer’s showers,

find at daybreak bowers

in a haze of wine.

Nightingales still hidden,

from sweet slumber risen

hear you ask unbidden:

Will you be my own?

I am yours alone.

Yours and yours alone.