Muuttolintu : Runoja by Hilja Aaltonen

Muuttolintu by Hilja Aaltonen is a collection of poems written in the early 20th century. The book centers on grief, longing, love, and spiritual reflection, framed by the rhythms of rural Finnish life and the changing seasons. Across four parts, the poems move from intimate mourning to wider meditations on nature, love, and faith. The opening cycle grieves a mother with stark funeral scenes and tender lullabies, then turns to addresses to Thought and Loneliness, where worldly striving has dimmed the inner light; nature images—waterlily, storm, autumn plains—mirror poverty, isolation, and homesickness. The middle section traces a love story of distance and return: sea-borne separation, self-exile, the pull back home, praise of the beloved, and a hard-won renunciation for another’s good, with a companion piece on two friends sharing loss. The final section confronts life’s harshness and the nearness of death, listens for a higher Word, and finds moments of grace in Christmas bells, Easter bonfires, moonlit nights, and the day’s renewal. A long retrospective poem recalls ancestral toil, famine and war, and the cyclical labor of fields and looms, before the book closes on a spring evening’s quiet question about darkness, stars, and what endures. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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About this eBook

Author Aaltonen, Hilja, 1885-1965
Title Muuttolintu : Runoja
Original Publication Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Rosma, 1926.
Credits Tuula Temonen
Language Finnish
LoC Class PH: Language and Literatures: Finno-Ugrian and Basque languages and literatures
Subject Finnish poetry -- 20th century
Category Text
eBook-No. 77159
Release Date
Copyright Public domain in the USA.
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