Iceland 10,000 Kronur Note Showing Jónas Hallgrímsson

Poems from Iceland are not frequently encountered outside the island nation. The following poem is from Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-1845).

On New Years Day 1845

Thus the years open, each of them in turn,
endlessly blooming flowers of transiency.
Their ceaseless passing is of no concern,
for time no longer means a thing to me.

I have a treasure of eternal worth:
a guardian heart which—girded against harm—
gazes on heaven but is content with earth,
and views the threatening fog without alarm.

“Always be tough!” they tell me. “Hold your own!”
But I would rather live and feel and see—
even when this earns me men’s antipathy—

than be a hollow half-decayed sheepbone,
hidden by pack-train boys in piles of stone,
stuffed full of slander and obscenity.