"Grave song
Restless is the river and waves roll,
sea alone is great and sea lovely.
Sleep river in the arms of the sea.
Wind wanders and leaf flies.
Happy the one who was in time in a valley.
Sleep leaf in the arms of the valley.
When the day rises, the star fades away.
One does not fade away for forever, the one who left from life.
Sleep star in the arms of the day."
Eino leino (My translation)
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I used to like poems at some point as a child, maybe preteen. I tried to learn to understand how to make such wise poems. Of this poem I think I thought the following:
I thought the idea was to make a poem about death, not about waking. So if someone is in pain or ill or the like, one is when politely at a distance saying it without hurting feelings, restless, and the river too may refer to trouble, and waves to supposed sexual relations going to that direction. If one then is adviced toward something but taken away one's own power in comparison, and adviced also to trust by feelings, then one is likely to disappear to it, be it death or one's own kind of lufe otherwise, anyway disappearing from the former environment.
If someone worries about such, one can say that it is good to let things go in natural ways, so there is less pain and other troubles in the world. In a way one has oneself made the choices in life which make one typical to those areas of life and types, to which one has a liking, choosing such freewillingly always, out of likkng such areas of life. So in a way it is good that one lives just such type of life, even if it may be short or wandering away to other districts.
When the day rises, the star is no longer the brightest but is anyway enjoying what one spoke for, besides such are periodic situations, so good to adapt to each kind of situation, noticing that death is different. And if one is tuned atmospherically to each kind of situation, maybe one knows how to continue to lufe after death. Similarly, old social relations may distance themselves but yet their professions may keep up the society and the world.
As far as I understood, the poem was not made for the deceased, but instead for the somewhat mourning relatives etc who want to understand by thinking for a while what such things like someone's death are like, why and when those happen and how to oneself avoid such in one's own life.
