hould our songs not falter;
As our sweet songs we are singing,
For the lengthy evenings' pleasure,
Singing later than the sunset?

Thus I heard the people talking,
And again it was repeated: 530
"E'en the waterfall when flowing
Yields no endless stream of water,
Nor does an accomplished singer,
Sing till all his knowledge fail him.
Better 'tis to sit in silence
Than to break off in the middle."

Now my song remains completed,
'Tis completed and abandoned.
In a ball I wind my lays up,
As a ball I cast them from me, 540
On the storehouse floor I lay them,
With a lock of bone secure them,
That from thence escape they never,
Nor in time may be untwisted,
Not unless the lock be opened,
And its jaws should be extended,
Not unless the teeth be opened,
And the tongue again is moving.

What would now avail my singing,
If the songs I sang were bad ones, 550
If I sang in every valley,
And I sang in every firwood?
For my mother lives no longer,
Wakes no more my own old mother,
Nor my golden one can hear me,
Nought can learn my dear old mother,
None would hear me but the fir-trees,
Learn, save branches of the pine-trees,
Or the tender leaves of birch-trees,
Or the charming mountain ash-tree. 560

I was small when died my mother,
Weak was I without my mother;
On the stones like lark she left me,
On the rocks like thrush she left me,
Left me like a lark to sing there,
Or to sing as sings the throstle,
In the wardship of a stranger,
At the will of a step-mother,
And she drove me forth, unhappy,
Forth she drove the unloved infant, 570
To a wind-swept home she drove me,
To the north-wind's home she drove me
That against the wind defenceless,
Winds might sweep away the orphan.

Like a lark away I wandered,
Like a hapless bird I wandered
Shelterless about the country;
Wearily I wandered onward,
Till with every wind acquainted,
I their roaring comprehended; 580
In the frost I learned to shudder,
And I learned to cry with freezing.

Even now do many people,
Many people I encounter,
Speak to me in angry accents,
Rudest speeches hurl against me,
Curses on my tongue they shower,