Sthephan G. Stephansson Poetry
THE EXILE
I have acquired somehow
no fatherland,
though harder around the heart
is wound the kinship bond,
that has bound my thoughts
to the soil, that bore me,
where youth's trails were lit
by the brightest sun of hope.
My foster nurse never quite
took my mother's place,
there was some deficiency —
I do not know what!
And therefore I have never had a claim
on her inheritance.
Still some unfamiliarity has
been wedged between us.
Nor are valleys, inlets, mountains
of a native earth good,
if the districts, hillsides, coasts are peopled
by a half unknown tribe.
Will you as glad embrace the store
of relatives and friends,
if you do not recognize the face
of your ancestral soul?
Still on spring nights green fields
are warmed by light sun,
still creeks coil around
the breast of domed hills,
the wavelet chants as before
out by the coastal sand —
but I have acquired somehow
no fatherland.
Written in 1891
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