The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1971, Page 41

39
THF ICELANDIC CANADIAN
The Mountain
by Stephan G. Stephansson
You towering mountain that once had your birth
In ancient convulsions of old mother earth:
You catch every morning the sun’s early rays
And turn to each sunset your snow-mantled face.
At dawn every morning the deep valleys thirst
For the rays of the sun that illumines you first,
And read from your face in the sun’s early glow
Tihe omens for sunlight or rainfall or snow.
But weatherwise mountain, the years have left trace
Of the keen tooth of time on your glorious face.
The glacier’s flow and the hurricane’s rage
Have worn on your features the furrows of age;
And the grandeur of granite that gloried your prime
Will be ground into dust in new eons of time.
That your grandeur will level to lowland I know
And sadly acknowledge that this must be so!
But a nation of men will enjoy the new land
Bequeathed by time’s busy, unhurrying hand,
And they will rejoice that your crag-gendered soil
Gives gainful rewards for their hours of toil.
And is it an unworthy fate to bestow
Your substance on life in the lowlands below?
— Translated by Thorvaldur Johnson