Prevod
Beside the green rampart that encircles Copenhagen stands a large red building with many windows, where balsam and southernwood grow. Within, all looks poor, and poor old people live there. This is Vartov.
Look! An old maid leans against the windowsill, plucking a withered leaf from the balsam and gazing out at the green rampart, where merry children romp. What is she thinking of? The drama of a lifetime unfolds in her mind.
The poor little ones, how happily they play! What rosy cheeks, what blessed eyes! Yet they have neither shoes nor stockings on their feet! They dance on the green rampart where, so the legend says, many years ago, when the earth kept sinking, an innocent child was lured with flowers and toys into an open grave, which they walled up while the little one played and ate. Then the rampart stood firm and was soon covered with lovely green turf. The little ones do not know the legend, or they would still hear the child crying down beneath the earth, and the dew on the grass would seem to them its burning tears. They do not know the story of Denmark’s king, who rode past here when the enemy lay outside the walls and swore that he would die in his nest. Then women and men came and poured boiling water down upon the white-clad enemy soldiers as they crawled through the snow up the outer slope of the rampart.
Merrily the poor little ones play. Play, little girl! Soon the years will come—yes, those blessed years: the confirmation children stroll hand in hand; you wear a white dress that has cost your mother dearly, though it has been altered from a larger, old one! You are given a red shawl; it hangs too far down, but then everyone can see how large it is, how very much too large! You think of your finery and of the good Lord. How lovely it is to walk on the rampart! And the years pass, with many dark days, but with youth still in your heart, and you find a sweetheart before you know it! You meet; you walk on the rampart in early spring, when all the church bells ring on Great Prayer Day. There are no violets to be found yet, but opposite Rosenborg stands a tree with the first green buds, and there you stop. Every year the tree puts forth green branches; not so the heart in the human breast, through which more dark clouds drift than the North has ever known. Poor child, your bridegroom’s bridal chamber will be his coffin, and you will become an old maid; from Vartov, behind the balsam, you will look out at the children playing and see your own story repeated.
And that is the very drama of a lifetime unfolding before the old maid as she gazes out at the rampart, where the sun shines and the children, with rosy cheeks and neither stockings nor shoes, rejoice like all the other birds of heaven.
