The Hosier and His Daughter

By Steen Steensen Blicher

"The greatest grief on earth, I fear,
Is but to lose the one you hold dear."

Sometimes, when I have been wandering far out on the great moor with only the brown heather around me and the blue sky above me... when strolling far from people and the reminders of their activity here below, which are really only molehills that Time or some restless Tamberlaine will one day raze to the ground... when stepping, lighthearted, on winged feet, as proud of my freedom as a Bedouin whom no house, no narrowly bounded field ties to the spot, but who owns, possesses everything he sees, dwelling nowhere but living where he pleases... when my far-roving eye has glimpsed a cottage on the horizon, thus rudely interrupted in its airy flight... then sometimes I came to wish - God forgive me this passing thought, for it was nothing more - that this human dwelling would vanish! For trouble and grief dwell there too, as well as and quarrelling and wrangling about mine and yours. Alas, this happy desert is both mine and yours; it belongs to everyone and to no one...

   ...It was Cecilia - pale, yet still beautiful, I thought, until she looked up at me. Alas, it was madness that shone in her dully gleaming eyes, in the sickly smile on her face. I noticed, too, that she had no spinning wheel, but that the one she imagined herself treading must have been of the same stuff as Macbeth´s dagger.

   She ceased both her singing and her airy spinning, and asked me eagerly, "Are you from Holstein? Did you see Esben? Will he be coming soon?"

   I realized how things stood, and promptly replied, "Yes, he won´t be staying much longer now; he sends you his greetings."
   "Then I must go out and meet him!" she cried happily, jumping up from her little straw stool and skipping over to the door...

Filled with melancholy thoughts I wandered homewards; my soul had taken on the colour of the desert. The thought of Cecilia and her dreadful fate kept on running through my mind. In every distant fata morgana I seemed to see the hosier"s daughter - how she sat spinning and rocking and flinging out her arms. In the mournful cry of the golden plover, in the monotonous, melancholy trills of the lonely wood lark I heard only the sadly true and deeply felt words of many thousands of wounded hearts:

"The greatest grief on earth, I fear,
Is to be parted from him you hold dear."

Translated by Paula Hostrup-Jessen