Here, Henrik Ibsen sends a poem to Susanna Thoresen, his fiancée, during the month of their engagement.
[Bergen], January 1856
TO THE ONLY ONE
The ball-room glitters resplendent,
Already the dance moves fast;
Ladies in rainbow clusters,
Airily decked, go past.
High overhead the music
Scatters its witchcraft fine;
Each dancer’s in festal humour,
Each lamp hath a festal shine
Hark to the ball-room courtships,
Whisperings soft and low—
All that the moment prompts of all
Dreamt or heard long ago.
And the ladies smile demurely
As memory’s album receives
Speeches, fiery and tender,
Not speakers nor hearer believes.
Throughout the crowded ball-room
There’s naught but gladness and mirth;
Not one of them all that hath felt it—
Not one that could ever guess
How, under the veil of rejoicing,
Lurks the horror of emptiness.
Ah yes! There is one, one only,
Among so many but one.
Her eyes have a secret sadness;
I read in them sorrow begun—
I read in them dreaming fancies
That rise and sink without cease—
A heart that longs and throbs upwards,
And finds in this world no peace.
Dared I but rede thee, thou riddle
Of youth and deep dreamings wrought;
Dared I but choose thee boldly
To be the bride of my thought;
Dared I but plunge my spirit
Deep in thy spirit’s tide,
Dared I but gaze on the visions
In thy innocent soul that hide;
Ah, then what fair songs upspringing
Should soar from my breast on high;
Ah, then how free I’d go sailing
Like a bird toward the coasts of the sky!
Ah, then should my scattered visions
To one single harmony throng;
For all of life’s fairest visions
Would mirror themselves in my song.
Dared I but rede thee, thou riddle
Of youth and deep dreamings wrought;
Dared I but choose thee boldly
To be the bride of my thought.
Henrik Ibsen
From Letters of Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen, Henrik, J. Nilsen Laurvik, and Mary Morison. New York: Duffield and Company, 1908