Autumn Song

Tove Jansson was a Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator, and comic strip author. She was the author of, among other works, the Moomin books. She was also a beautiful poet, and among many other things wrote the lyrics to this wonderful song "Höstvisa" ("Autumn Song") set to music by Erna Tauro.

I always prefer it with the Finnish group Cumulus, because they sing it in the authentic Finland Swedish dialect.




Autumn Song (English translation by Bock McMillan)

The road home was very long
and I have met no one
Now, the evenings are getting cool and late.
Please comfort me a little,
for now I'm pretty tired,
and at once so terribly alone.
I never noticed before,
that the darkness is so great,
thinking of all that one should.
There are so many things
I should have said and done,
and there is so very little I did do.  
Hurry my love, hurry to love, 
days getting darker by the minute.
Light our candles, it's close to night,
soon the flowering summer is over.
 
I'm searching for something 
that maybe we forgot about
and that you could help me to find. 
A summer is passing,
it is always so short,  
it is the dream of all you could have won.  
You will perhaps sometime, ere twilight turns blue 
before the meadows are dry and empty. 
Perhaps we will find each other, 
maybe we will find 
a way to get everything to bloom. 

Hurry my love, hurry to love,
days getting darker by the minute. 
Light our candles, it's close to night,
soon the flowering summer is over.

Now the winds of a storm out there 
and closed is the door of summer, 
it is too late to wonder and look.
Maybe I love less than I did before 
but more than you ever will know. 
Now we see all the lighthouses
around the autumn of coastline 
and hear the waves slowly wandering.
Only one thing is important 
and that's heart's content 
and to be together with each other.

Hurry my love, hurry to love, 
days getting darker by the minute.
Light our candles, it's close to night,
soon the flowering summer is over.