Poem by the Norwegian writer Nils Collett Vogt (1864-1937)

Were I but a forest spruce tree –

It’s already now late autumn.

Gone the quiver in the air.

Ice-blue now it stands and stares

at the columns of sleek birch,

which like yellow altar flames

gleam within the forest’s church.

At the winter storm’s arrival –

all the forest starts and shudders

and the altar candles’ light

at first tremble dies from sight,

leaves swirl round like sparks in flurries,

pale the sky grows, snow starts falling, –

tall spruce only are not passive,

but like banners, huge and massive

through the forest halls start calling.

Then it is I roam the forest,

and I hear the wind that’s sighing,

tugging at the well-worn summits,

howling round the rock’s black shelf

that from its great sheerness plummets.

And I think then to myself:

You’re no penny-candle light

that at some faint gust starts dying!

Were I but a forest spruce tree

which, when winter storms convene –

pale the sky grows, snow starts falling –

through the forest halls starts calling

like a mighty unfurled banner,

till the coming summer’s green!