The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1963, Blaðsíða 37

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
35
PUPPY LOVE
By chance I found a charming sprite,
Who challenged one to mad delight,
But why and how it happened so
I hardly know.
And whence she came or how we met
I have decided to forget.
An elf is she and haunts the hills,
And rocks and rills.
So gay and free and fair is she
And fickle as a honey bee,
Engaging me, eluding me
For all to see.
Then fiery tempered, frantic, riled,
She flies away, a creature wild,
Returning gentle, meek and mild,
Much like a child.
She dances through my dreams by
night
A day with her is epic flight:
My good intent away from guile
A glance, a smile.
By nimble wit and without shame
Is virtue singed near passions flame;
My ethic now a siren song
I see no wrong.
What thorough sham, her threat to
yield!
A thrust, a parry brooks no shield;
Yet ere my strength and will are won
She’s vanished — — gone.
And she is here and she is there
Now lost, now found, ’most anywhere.
And fleet is she as I am slow-----
Oh, let her go.
When summer days have sauntered by
And singing migrants wing the sky,
She senses wicked winter nigh
And waves good-bye.
II.
She made her leave, yet many a day
Her misty presence trails my way
And elfin echoes in the wind
Assails the mind.
From some remote and rocky nook
Comes rippling on a gurgling brook.
I know its muffled throbbing thrills
Her throaty trills.
In passing where the garden grows
I glimpse her blushing like a rose.
Where honeyed airs through heather
flows
She whispers low.
And when the moon her magic yields
To midnight haze on lakes and fields,
The mystic aura of her hair
Shows everywhere.
III.
No more for me, when daylight dies,
Sweet dreams from out the past arise.
No more I see her shining eyes
In starry skies.
I felt it in my heart and head
And heard it whispered, plainly said,
By somber Night above my bed,
Boy, Love is dead.
Johannes P. Palsson