Now, children, lay us in two lofty graves
Down by the sea-shore, near the deep-blue waves:
Their sounds shall to our souls be music sweet,
Singing our dirge as on the strand they beat.
When round the hills the pale moonlight is thrown
And midnight dews fall on the Bautn-stone,
We’ll sit, O Thorsten, in one rounded graves
And speak together o’er the gentle waves.
Finally, it is a beautiful thought that there was a sympathetic union between the dead and the living. As the Persians believed that the rivers of the lower world grew by the tears of the living and interfered with the happiness of the departed, so the Norse peasant still believes that when a daughter weeps for the death of her father she must take care that no tear falls on his corpse, for thereby the peace of the deceased would be disturbed. We find this same thought expressed in the Elder Edda, where Helge says to Sigrun:
Thou alone causest, Sigrun