Poetry
Klagevisa över denna torra och kalla vår
Not translated into English
Lars Wivallius · 1642
Synopsis
Twenty-two stanzas on a cold, dry spring that shortens the summer. The speaker implores heaven: let a May rain fall thick, let a warm dew wet the grasses, let the frost stop bruising the flowers and let the field still feed the peasant. He asks that the lark not die, that the swallow live, that the cuckoo call and that the nightingale, silenced by the cold, begin to sing again; that the young sing and the children dance.
Context
The poem appeared in Stockholm in 1642, in twenty-two stanzas, with the indication that it is sung to the tune of the hymn Den signade dag, whose metre it takes up; Olle Adolphson and Ulf Bagge each gave it a new melody in the twentieth century. The sources date it to the captivity at Kajaneborg or to the spring that followed the release of 1641. It can be read as a prayer for the harvest and a praise of the Creation. The 1642 print is reproduced page by page by Litteraturbanken.
Who it is for
Twenty-two strophes, in seventeenth-century Swedish, made to be sung; the facsimile of the original print is online and free.
Prizes and reception
The poem that made its author one of the foremost Swedish poets of his generation; it keeps its place among the classics and is still sung.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.