1 ■•.•>.,'•.
 
 swenej^s j[^u%e^r£
 
 OTHER BOOKS BY 
 CHARLES WHARTON STORK 
 
 Sea and 'Bay. 
 
 The Queen of Orplede. 
 
 T>ay T)reams of Qreece. 
 
 Selected T'oems of Qustaf Fr'dding ( Translated^ . 
 
 zAnthology of Swedish J^^yrics ( Translated^ . 
 
 The J^jrical 'Poems of Hugo "^on Hofmannsthal ( Translated') .
 
 SWEDEN'S LAUREATE: 
 
 Selected 'Toems ofVerner ')>on Heidenstam. 
 
 'Translated from the Swedish '\vith an 
 Introduction by Qharles Wharton Stork. 
 
 NEW HAVEN ■ YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS • MDCCCCXIX
 
 Copyright y 1 9 1 9, by 
 Tale University 'Press.
 
 CO 
 
 c 
 ja 
 
 'kl 
 
 o 
 CO 
 
 To zMy Friend 
 RICHARD MÖTT GUMMERE \\' 
 
 as the twenty-one year mile-stone of 
 an unbroken friendship and fellowship 
 this volume is affectionately dedicated. 
 
 298607
 
 T^reface and zAcknowledgements. 
 
 This volume contains about one-fourth of the 
 material in Heidenstam's three volumes: Vallfart 
 och Vandringsår, 1888; Dikter, 1895; and Nya 
 Dikter, 1915 — all published by Albert Bonnier, 
 Stockholm. The translations are published with the 
 personal approval and consent of Herr von Heiden- 
 stam. 
 
 The translator hereby extends his thanks to the 
 proprietors of the following publications for their 
 courteous permission to reproduce such poems or 
 critical material as first appeared in their pages: 
 Harper s Monthly Magazine, The Independent, 
 New York Nation, Bookman, Stratford Journal, 
 Poetry Journal, Pagan, Contemporary Verse, and 
 Youth. 
 
 More particular thanks is due to the American- 
 Scandinavian Foundation for the use of poems which 
 appeared in my Anthology of Swedish Lyrics and in 
 the American-Scandinavian Review. To the Foun- 
 dation I am also indebted for a plebiscite conducted 
 through the Stockholm Dagblad, to which several 
 hundred readers sent the titles of their favorite 
 poems. From this contest Heidenstam emerged in a 
 tie for second place with Axel Erik Karlfeldt, an- 
 other living poet. First place fell to Gustaf Fröding, 
 of whose selected poems I have already brought out 
 a volume. As, however, Froding's charm lies so 
 peculiarly in the verbal magic of the Swedish, I 
 
 7
 
 believe that it is possible to give readers of English 
 a somewhat better account of Heidenstam, who de- 
 pends more equally on form and substance. The 
 favorite single poem in the plebiscite was the Pil- 
 grim's Yule Song here published for the first time 
 in translation. The Dagblad's list was of great 
 assistance in making the selections for this volume. 
 In details of the work I have been ably assisted by 
 the revision of the reader of the Yale University 
 Press. Mrs. A. B. Fries and Mr. Edwin Björk- 
 man have also helped with knotty passages. In 
 the Introduction I have made use of material in 
 an article by Miss Hanna A. Larson in the New 
 York Evening Mail for Feb. 16, 1918. 
 
 No liberties have been taken with the original 
 text except that I have furnished separate titles to 
 the "Thoughts in Loneliness" so as to assist the 
 reader in reference. The order of the poems is the 
 same as in the Swedish, except that the "Thoughts 
 m Loneliness" have been shifted from before "The 
 Happy Artists" to the end of the selections from 
 Pilgrimages. The metres and rhyme-schemes are 
 followed carefully, except in a few minor instances. 
 Although I have endeavored primarily to make my 
 translations good English poetry, with no suggestion 
 that they are other than first-hand, I believe that I 
 have been able to follow the Swedish more closely 
 than in my previous volumes. In the few prose 
 sketches I have tried to suggest the cadence as well 
 as to give the meaning of the Swedish prose. 
 8
 
 Verse translation should rank higher as an art 
 than even the most skilful photography. It is perhaps 
 most like making an engraving of a well-known 
 building; the translator may not change the outlines 
 or add anything extraneous, but he must re-create 
 the beauty or majesty of his subject in a new 
 medium. Some of the old-fashioned Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury translations are like picture post-cards compared 
 to the vital and delicate renderings that recent Eng- 
 lish masters have attained. As form is so much an 
 essential of poetry, the test of verse translation 
 should be very largely that applied to original work. 
 I realize that this statement is in the nature of a 
 challenge, but I had rather be condemned as an 
 inferior poet than approved as a good copyist. 
 
 CHARLES WHARTON STORK. 
 
 "Birdwood," Philadelphia.
 
 A SONG TO HEIDENSTAM 
 
 Voice of Sweden's land and men, 
 
 Heidenstam ! 
 
 Rouse thy people once again, 
 
 Heidenstam ! 
 
 Sing the splendor of her past. 
 
 Legend-glory dim and vast, 
 
 Heidenstam, Heidenstam! 
 
 Sing her forests dark and deep, 
 
 Heidenstam ! 
 
 Sing her long white winter sleep, 
 
 Heidenstam ! 
 
 Then with tones prophetic sing 
 
 All the rapture of her spring, 
 
 Heidenstam, Heidenstam ! 
 
 Sing the Northland bold and free, 
 
 Heidenstam ! 
 
 Sing the wonders that shall be, 
 
 Heidenstam ! 
 
 Sing of Sweden's heart and mind 
 
 Aiding, heartening all mankind, 
 
 Heidenstam, Heidenstam ! 
 
 11
 
 rne TO€TTir of ve%2^Ti 
 
 1. 
 
 * 
 
 The English-reading countries of the world, more 
 particularly the United States, have in the late dec- 
 ade or so been growing rapidly cosmopolitan. This 
 has come about from the increase of culture through 
 education and travel, from the growth of immigra- 
 tion and commerce, and of late, naturally, from the 
 war. Never have Americans given nearly such atten- 
 tion to contemporary foreign literature as they have 
 been giving recently. The situation is analogous to 
 that of Elizabethan England, when everyone was 
 talking about the latest French or Italian or Spanish 
 writer ; and the auguries are fair that this country 
 may be developing a Renaissance of art that will far 
 outstrip our somewhat meager achievements in the 
 past. 
 
 With this remarkable stimulus of interest in 
 European and even Asiatic literature, it seems purely 
 an accident that our attention has only very tardily 
 been directed to the beauties of Swedish poetry. In 
 the influx of foreign books, novels have led the way : 
 Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, and South Ameri- 
 can novels. Plays, too, have been arriving to a con- 
 siderable extent. But even foreign poets, thanks to 
 recent advances in the art of verse translation, have 
 in many cases gained a foothold here. We have only 
 
 13
 
 to think of Tagore, Verhaeren, Vildrac, Carducci, 
 and Dario. People have heard the names at least. 
 The pioneer of modern Scandinavian authors was 
 the Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen, but he was soon fol- 
 lowed by the Swedes, August Strindberg and Selma 
 Lagerlöf. Now that the Swedish play and the 
 Swedish novel have won their place, we should be 
 quite ready for the entrance of Swedish poetry. 
 
 There are many reasons why this poetry should 
 appeal particularly to American readers. In the 
 first place, it may well trust to its intrinsic merits. 
 Critics such as Mr. Edmund Gosse, who are con- 
 versant with the best in nearly every literature, agree 
 that Swedish narrative and lyric poetry during the 
 last hundred and fifty years will compare favorably, 
 both in form and substance, with the poetry of any 
 literature during a like period. There are at least 
 nine poets of a rank similar to that of Burns, Byron, 
 Shelley, Browning, and Poe. Furthermore, the 
 Scandinavian genius is closely akin to us; it has the 
 same seriousness, the same vigor, the same nobility 
 of feeling. With a fine range of imagination it 
 combines a closeness to earth which conveys a dis- 
 tinctively national flavor. 
 
 ' The Swede, having tilled his ancestral soil for 
 longer than any other European race, has the deepest 
 attachment to it and has furthermore inherited a 
 treasure of legend and historic association. Love of 
 nature is an almost universal trait, ae-ts-resflfied by 
 tb^-spiettditHatTdscape paintings wTiich'WCTrTeecntiy 
 14
 
 exhibited rn-this ee«fttry. Added to these qualities, 
 the Swede is usually a traveled, cultivated man, well 
 grounded in the classics and apt in picking up modern 
 languages. His success in engineering and other 
 forms of modern industry shows him to be alert and 
 thoroughly up to the times. He has also been quick 
 to face modern social problems: feminism, class 
 privilege, and internationalism. In short, the Swede 
 is worth knowing and worth hearing. He is pro- 
 ficient in all the arts; in music, painting, sculpture, 
 and literature ; but native and foreign observers unite 
 in maintaining that he probably shows himself best 
 in poetry. 
 
 As to the fact that we have remained so long 
 ignorant of Swedish verse, it can only be said, "the 
 more's the pity." Many people have known of this 
 hidden treasure. A century ago Goethe, and a gen- 
 eration afterwards Longfellow, admired the genius 
 of Tegnér, and the latter translated one of his best 
 poems. Runeberg, ranked as one of the world's 
 greatest patriotic poets, has been frequently, though 
 seldom adequately, done into English. The Ency- 
 clopedia Britannica also gives separate biographies to 
 Bellman, Snoilsky, Viktor Rydberg, and Levertin. 
 Theodore Roosevelt in his Autobiography tells us 
 that he found time to read and enjoy the works of 
 Topelius. Scholars have always known about 
 Swedish poetry, but this knowledge has never hap- 
 pened to become popular. Verse rendition from 
 Swedish to English is not especially difficult, as the 
 
 15
 
 principles of rhythm and stanza are the same for 
 both literatures, but satisfactory translations have 
 never happened to be made. 
 
 Another excuse for the delayed recognition of 
 Svv^edish poetry is the fact that it has only very 
 recently attained its zenith. Out of nine or ten stars 
 of the first magnitude, six have arisen since 1870, 
 and four of these since 1888. Although Heidenstam 
 is unquestionably the most important living poet of 
 Sweden, E. A. Karlfeldt is not far behind him, vv^ith 
 his deep, quaintly humorous, but very delicately 
 wrought lyrics of nature and peasant life. Besides 
 these two there are Daniel Fallström, K. G. Ossian- 
 nilsson, Oscar Stjerne, Bertel Gripenberg, and a 
 dozen others of noteworthy attainments, some of 
 them young enough to promise great things for the 
 future. 
 
 2. 
 
 It is to be regretted that we have had to make 
 so long a preamble before coming to our immediate 
 subject, but we have had to face the truth that most 
 otherwise well-informed persons have never heard 
 the name of a single Swedish poet. Nothing could 
 be more unjust, in speaking of the merits of Heiden- 
 stam, than to give the impression that he is the only, 
 or even the greatest, master his country has produced. 
 The present writer has recently brought out an 
 anthology of translations which, though by no means 
 widely inclusive, contains lyrics by forty-five poets. 
 To this work the reader is referred for further illus- 
 16
 
 tration and details on the subject of Swedish poetry 
 in general. 
 
 Fortunately, Verner von Heidenstam is such an 
 individual genius that we can sketch his immediate 
 literary background very briefly. Between 1850 and 
 1870 Swedish poetry languished in a sort of mid- 
 Victorian back-water. About the latter date a new 
 vitality came into being with the work of Viktor 
 Rydberg and Count Snoilsky. Rydberg sent a glow 
 of humanity into his classic and philosophic lyrics. 
 Snoilsky, beginning with a colorful volume of Italian 
 poems, developed from an aesthete into a democrat, 
 writing ballads from Swedish history and affirming 
 the doctrine that art should minister to the hungry 
 multitude, not to "culture's overladen boards." The 
 popular impulse which appeared to a modified degree 
 in the poetry of Rydberg and Snoilsky was exhibited 
 as the crudest and most violent realism in the novels 
 and plays of August Strindberg, who held the center 
 of the literary stage during the eighties. 
 
 Thus it was upon a field of combat that Heiden- 
 stam made his debut with his first volume of poems 
 in 1888. The old sentimentalism had largely dis- 
 appeared and a fierce war was being waged between 
 the extreme, unmitigated realists and the new, more 
 vital idealists. Into this combat Heidenstam at once 
 plunged on the side of the idealists along with two 
 other distinguished poets, Gustaf Fröding and Oscar 
 Levertin. 
 
 Fröding is at once the Burns and the Heine of 
 
 17
 
 Swedish poetry ; he not onlj^ represents with inimita- 
 ble spirit the life of the peasant, he can also — in 
 moods ranging from whimsical humor to deep pathos 
 — reveal the tragedy of his own brief career. This 
 most brilliant of Swedish poets, who is still today 
 the idol of his countrymen, broke down from dissipa- 
 tion in 1898 and, though he recovered his reason and 
 lived on until 1911, never regained the lost magic 
 of his art. Oscar Levertin, of Spanish-Jewish de- 
 scent, has a more mystical and aesthetic bent. He is 
 the typical poet of the ivory tower, a notable critic 
 and finished stylist, whose ill health gave his imagina- 
 tion a somewhat morbid tinge. He died in 1906. 
 The genius of Heidenstam, if not the most dazzling, 
 has at least proved itself the most healthy and robust 
 of the group. Though he was the eldest of the 
 three, he has survived them both and still preserves 
 his full physical and mental powers. 
 
 We now pass to the external events of Heiden- 
 stam's life. He was born July 6, 1859, of noble 
 family, in southern Sweden, the seat of one of the 
 earliest continuous civilizations in Europe. Families 
 of that region trace back their descent a thousand 
 years or so and reach no record of having come from 
 anywhere else. The landscape is mostly Hat, but 
 broken by many lakes and largely covered by the 
 wild forest of Tiveden. Within sight of the poet's 
 18
 
 present home stands the castle of Vadstena, built by 
 Gustaf Vasa. It is here, in the midst of ancestral 
 traditions, that Heidenstam has been living for the 
 past thirty years. 
 
 As a boy the poet was shy and a great reader, 
 especially of poetry and battle stories. Like Roose- 
 velt he w^as an admirer of Topelius, as well as of 
 the narrative poets Tegnér and Runeberg, and the 
 dramatic, but rather overstrained lyrist, Lidner. At 
 school he was fondest of Latin and geography. 
 When sixteen years old he had a nervous illness and 
 by the doctor's advice was sent to the South, where 
 he sojourned mainly in Italy, Greece, and the Orient, 
 His wanderings lasted many years with occasional 
 visits home, during one of which he was married. 
 Finally, impressed by the visual beauty of the scenes 
 in which he lived, Heidenstam resolved to become a 
 painter and, despite the dissuasion of his family, went 
 to Paris and studied for a time under Gerome. 
 Though he enjoyed the care-free life he was dis- 
 satisfied with being only able, as he felt, to touch 
 the surface of things. 
 
 He longed for home but, having become estranged 
 from his family, he was obliged to remain an exile. 
 In a fit of discouragement he isolated himself from 
 the world at the old castle of Brunegg in Switzer- 
 land. Here he saw no one but his wife and occa- 
 sionally Strindberg. At last, however, his real talent 
 came to light, and amid these gloomy surroundings 
 Heidenstam composed a series of dramatic poems and 
 
 19
 
 poetic sketches which fairly glowed with the warmth 
 and color of Paris, Italy, and the East. In 1887 he 
 was summoned home to the death-bed of his father 
 and in 1888 his poems were published under the title. 
 Pilgrimages and Wanderyears. 
 
 Heidenstam's first book, despite the fact that it 
 was considered "exotic" and "peculiar," had a bril- 
 liant success; it was in fact pronounced one of the 
 most remarkable debuts in Swedish literature. Of 
 the poetry in itself we shall speak later. Suffice it 
 here to say that Heidenstam, no longer in doubt as 
 to his true vocation, settled down once more in his 
 native region to fulfill his artistic destiny. From 
 then on his life has been the succession of prose and 
 poetry volumes that came from his pen. 
 
 Heidenstam's next important book, the novel 
 Hans Alienus, was another succession of travel-pic- 
 tures through which the hero passes in search of his 
 ideal. This he partly finds on his return to Sweden 
 in the worship of a simple and austere beauty. His 
 life, however, appears to him to be a negation, a 
 sacrifice of being to the desire of merely knowing. 
 
 In his Poems, published in 1895, Heidenstam 
 comes much nearer to finding himself. These are 
 alternately narrative, descriptive, and reflective, and 
 are nearly all about Sweden. There is a concentra- 
 tion, a firmness, a strength in them as of Antaeus in 
 contact with his mother earth. The same spirit per- 
 vades his collections of tales from Swedish history 
 and legend, works which by their vivid and forceful 
 20
 
 style ranked their author as hig:h in prose as he 
 already stood in poetry. The most popular of his 
 prose works is Karolinerna, a group of tales which 
 depict the heroism of the Swedish people under 
 Charles XII. 
 
 His third poetical volume, Nezu Poems, appeared 
 in 1915. This contains a majority of the lyrics for 
 which he is most beloved, which have made his name 
 nearly synonymous with Sweden in the hearts of his 
 five and a half million compatriots. These poems 
 are like a trumpet-call to his people, a summons to 
 awake and renew in the present the glories of the 
 past. Heidenstam's former doubts and struggles are 
 largely replaced by a calm dignity of outlook. The 
 self-centered man has forgotten his despondency by 
 merging himself into the larger soul of his country. 
 He sings: 
 
 O thou, our native land, our larger home. 
 Weave of our lives thy glory and thy blessing! 
 
 To those familiar with his claims to the honor, 
 it came as no surprise that in 1916 Heidenstam was 
 awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Where 
 indeed is there in Europe today a writer of more 
 sincerity and inborn originality? To be sure he is by 
 no means always easy to follow. His style is com- 
 pressed and abrupt. With his intense, imaginative, 
 
 21
 
 and penetrating mind, he is perhaps most like Brown- 
 ing. He does not, however, often complicate his 
 poetry with parentheses or diffuse himself in abstract 
 speculation. With a painter's eye, he is consistently 
 visual. 
 
 We shall best appreciate his work by determin- 
 ing his artistic creed. The present writer has else- 
 where denominated him an "imaginative realist," 
 but Heidenstam might properly resent being called 
 a realist of any sort. Above all things he abhors 
 uninspired naturalism; "gray-weather moods," he 
 calls it. To his thinking Strindberg merely "let the 
 cellar air escape through the house." He likewise 
 repudiates pessimism no less than sentimentalism. 
 Yet, he is no dodger of issues, no apostle of easy 
 acquiescence. The solution of this apparent anomaly 
 is that what Heidenstam seeks is not external fact 
 but underlying truth. He wrestles with life for the 
 deeper meaning of life. We may therefore call him 
 an applied idealist, or perhaps better still, a vitalist. 
 
 Taking his three poetical volumes in detail, we 
 can observe Heidenstam gradually winning his mas- 
 tery over art and life. In the Pilgrimages we dis- 
 cover not mere description, but a series of striking 
 ideas powerfully presented. Like most youthful 
 poets, Heidenstam attacks superficiality, hypocrisy, 
 and narrow moral restrictions. Most typical is the 
 poem where Mahmoud Khan reveals by a blow of 
 his sword that the people's god is the priests' money- 
 chest. The chief inspiration of the volume lies in 
 22
 
 its positive revelation of beauty; not of remote, 
 ethereal beauty, however, but of the beauty of actual, 
 or vividly imagined scenes and people; the beauty 
 perceived by the artist, though it may seem inex- 
 tricably mingled with ugliness. 
 
 Besides this, we are struck by an unusual dramatic 
 sense. Heldenstam knows how to develop a stirring 
 narrative up to an inevitable, but often unexpected 
 conclusion. As in the novels of George Meredith, 
 the climaxes are often apparent anti-climaxes, as 
 when in "Djufar's Song" the old poet is so overcome 
 by the beauty of an oriental morning that he can only 
 express it in weeping. The imagery is often daring, 
 as when a negro's lips are compared to the crimson 
 gash on a wine skin, but such realistic details are only 
 used to verify the central idea. For instance, the 
 negro just referred to is not made ultimately to for- 
 feit our sympathy ; he becomes for us not a comic or 
 degraded man, but simply an actual man. Heiden- 
 stam, though one of the most daringly earnest of 
 poets, is sufficiently an artist to relieve his style by 
 touches of humor and of the deeper sort of romance. 
 
 The most frequent motive of the oriental poems 
 and poetic-prose sketches is the duty of enjoying the 
 moment, of living and not spending one's youth in 
 getting ready to live. It is thus that Heidenstam 
 interprets the text: Take no thought for the mor- 
 row! In "The Fig-Tree" he pictures Christ as 
 ministering to the immediate wants of the disciples, 
 while Judas hastens away, reflecting that with thirty 
 
 23
 
 more pieces of silver he will be able to buy a house 
 and settle down as a man of property. There is a 
 democratic impulse in Heidenstam's philosophy of 
 pleasure, a belief that a true symposium begets fra- 
 ternity: 
 
 As like brothers, 
 
 Sharing the loaf and the goat-skin flask, we are sit- 
 ting together. 
 
 In the convivial air sprouts the seed from which may 
 in secret 
 
 Grow the all-brothering hour. 
 
 The idea has been followed, whether consciously or 
 unconsciously, by the French poet Charles Vildrac 
 in his piece "The Two Drinkers." 
 
 Most of the poems in Pilgrimages and Wander- 
 years are objective narratives, but the "Thoughts in 
 Solitude" consist of short, personal lyrics in an intro- 
 spective, often gloomy vein which Heidenstam has 
 never ceased to cultivate. We find him in these 
 "Thoughts" as an agnostic boldly searching for, as 
 he puts it, the "spark" that "dwells deep wn'thin his 
 soul." Some of these searchings will shock the 
 orthodox, but they reveal with wonderful insight the 
 depths of the poet's inmost nature. The ecclesiastical 
 dogma of the atonement is repugnant to his man- 
 hood ; he wishes to suffer in person for whatever 
 wrong he has committed. He will not pray on his 
 death-bed to a hypothetical god or to "deaf Nature," 
 24
 
 but to his living fellow-men that they may forgive 
 him as he forgives them. Above all we learn here 
 that through all his wanderings the deepest passion 
 of Heidenstam's heart was for Sweden, especially 
 because of its early associations, 
 
 The stones where as a child I used to play. 
 
 He longs to be worthy of his heritage, to give his 
 life for some sacred cause. He believes it is only 
 in moments of great exaltation that we really live. 
 
 In the Poems, which appeared seven years later, 
 the development of the poet is extremely marked. 
 We find the same sincere, penetrative self-analysis 
 as before, but it is a far larger self that Heidenstam 
 now has to offer. He has found his great cause, has 
 made himself a part of his country, its past glories 
 and its present problems. It is most characteristic 
 that, with all his devotion to his native district, he 
 describes both landscape and people in the most 
 unflinching terms. 
 
 The peasant bites at his black rye cake. 
 And loose stones rattle beneath his plough. 
 How gray, how clad in joylessness 
 Are all of the scenes that meet me ! 
 My native soil, in the ragged dress 
 Of poverty you greet me. 
 
 Heidenstam sees his country as it is but does not 
 love one whit the less for seeing it so veraciously. 
 Besides descriptive and reflective pieces, the Poems 
 
 25
 
 include three very notable longer compositions. The 
 first is the "Pilgrim's Song" reprinted from Hans 
 Alienus. This poem symbolizes the way in which 
 Alienus (or Heidenstam) has become lost in the 
 "world of shadows" through which his travels led 
 him. With deep imaginative truth the poet depicts 
 the mind which has been so filled with visions of 
 the past that the present becomes unmeaning and 
 unreal. The compressed description and beautiful 
 handling of a difficult stanza form render the poem 
 in all respects a masterpiece. 
 
 More unusual is the long narrative "Childhood 
 Friends." The story of the girl who breaks her 
 engagement with the man she loves because, after a 
 long separation, she finds herself too old for him, is 
 partly paralleled by the case of Louise Smith in 
 Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. 
 
 Herbert broke our engagement of eight years 
 
 When Annabelle returned to the village 
 
 From the Seminary, ah me ! 
 
 If I had let my love for him alone 
 
 It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow — 
 
 In Heidenstam's poem the heroine does just what 
 Louise Smith should have done, she lets her love 
 grow into a beautiful sorrow. There is, further- 
 more, a courage in the Swedish woman's renuncia- 
 tion which is no less memorable because it is so quiet. 
 But the most original passage of the poem is where 
 26
 
 the hero, disillusioned after one of his amours, 
 attacks relentlessly the glorification of sensual love. 
 Care must be taken to regard the brutal downright- 
 ness of this speech for exactly what it is, i.e., the 
 tirade of an undeceived sentimentalist. 
 
 The noblest poem of the volume is "Singers from 
 the Steeple." After the (as we should now call 
 him) Bolshevist husband has in his imagination rung 
 in destruction for the race of tyrant money-lords, his 
 wife in turn mounts to the steeple. She beholds not 
 "savage and weaponed men" or "kindled cities 
 aflame," which would be but a repetition of former 
 evils, but a festal "brothering-day" of mutual for- 
 bearance and love, with the motto: 
 
 Not joy to the rich, to the poor man care; 
 Our toil and our pleasure alike we share. 
 
 Other types and themes are included in the Poems. 
 There are historical and imaginative narratives rem- 
 iniscent of his earlier work. In "The Cradle-Songs 
 of Goldilocks" he approaches the folk-song quality 
 of Fröding, though with much more sophistication. 
 The short lyrics of self-scrutiny continue, in a tone 
 that would be morbid except for its intensity. Hei- 
 denstam's increase of mastery is mainly shown in his 
 contact with the Sweden of today. 
 
 After a long interval filled with prose works, 
 appeared in 1915 the New Poems. In these we find 
 that Heidenstam has evolved from an inspired 
 thinker to a leader. His style, wholly lucid and 
 
 27
 
 direct, has assumed a ring of command. His words 
 awaken now not merely admiration, but enthusiasm. 
 Without his saying so, we feel in him the quality of 
 St, Paul affirming: "I have fought the good fight, I 
 have kept the faith." In him is the just self-confi- 
 dence of the man who is "the captain of his soul." 
 He has found a deeper joy than pleasure. "Happi- 
 ness is a woman's jewel," he says. 
 
 Gods remorseless, fates unsparing. 
 Scanty bread — aye, that 's the cruel. 
 Bracing life for men. 
 
 It is the man behind the poem that has won a 
 nation for his audience. When he adjures his fellow- 
 -countrymen to emulate the deeds of their ancestors 
 in the modern fields "of science and art and letters," 
 he is heeded because he has himself shown the way. 
 There are no finer modern poems of patriotism than 
 the series entitled "A People," where Heidenstam 
 prays for years of misfortune to "smite us and lash 
 us into one." It is the fighting optimist who inveighs 
 against weighing men in a money-scale and dividing 
 the head of the nation from the heart, and it is he 
 again who in "A Day" bids the new-born day 
 
 Send, lightning-like, a spirit sword 
 To flash the road before us. 
 
 There are still gloomy pieces in this last volume. 
 These are, however, relieved by poems of reconcilia- 
 28
 
 tion and tolerance. From the vantage-ground of 
 maturity Heidenstam can look back and behold 
 where 
 
 the realm of jouth once more is gleaming 
 Strewn as erst with light and morning dew. 
 
 He can in imagination look down at the world after 
 his death and perceive that 
 
 true and noble creeds 
 Even on my foemen's shields are blazoned clear. 
 
 That the man is not other than his work is borne 
 witness to by all who know him. He is over six 
 feet in height and powerfully built, with strongly- 
 marked aquiline features. A man who never valued 
 fame for its own sake, he is in the least possible 
 danger of being weakened by success. Generous to 
 all but himself, he is in especial the patron of all 
 promising literary aspirants. 
 
 Little has been said of Heidenstam's poetic style 
 except that it is intense, colorful, and abrupt. In a 
 sense Heidenstam at first seems to have no style, for 
 he is so swept along by the current of compelling 
 inspiration that he has little time to stop for decora- 
 tive embellishment. He is one of the most com- 
 pressed of poets; often indeed he runs the risk of 
 being too compressed. And yet, as said before, he 
 
 29
 
 never fails to make an attentive reader behold a 
 landscape or grasp a dramatic situation. With a few 
 impressionistic touches he both actualizes and indi- 
 vidualizes a situation. Take, for example, the pic- 
 ture of a galley setting forth at sunset over the calm 
 Mediterranean: 
 
 Slow^ly she rowed far out against the sun 
 And vanished on the mirror of the sea. 
 
 His imagery is extraordinarily direct and first-hand, 
 as in 
 
 Four quick metallic blows, like wing-beats close to 
 each other. 
 
 Whether it be a description of the Orient or the 
 presentation of some complex spiritual emotion, Hei- 
 denstam's interpretative genius rises alike to the occa- 
 sion in giving our senses the very feel of what he 
 presents. As we have noted, he never rejects a 
 homely or even a grotesque figure if it suits his pur- 
 pose, as in the comparison of Jerusalem with its 
 walls and cupolaed houses to a basket of eggs. In 
 imagery Heidenstam ranks with the greatest poets 
 and need not even shun comparison with Dante. 
 
 In his verse-form Heidenstam, like Browning, lets 
 his verbal music be too much overruled by his sub- 
 stance. He sticks almost always to rhyme and to a 
 regular metric foot, but his variation of stanza- 
 scheme and of the length of his line is at times con- 
 fusing and rather too casual. One would like to 
 30
 
 have a clearer pattern, to become used to a definite 
 stanza and lose oneself in the rhythm. However, 
 Heidenstam's type of "freed verse," as the French 
 call it, is not unsuited to his abrupt changes of 
 thought. Heidenstam is said to resemble Byron in 
 having a poor ear for music. Without striking the 
 reader as either harsh or unskilful, he is certainly 
 below the average of the best Swedish poets in 
 melodic beauty. Not many, even of the great poets, 
 can combine all felicities. 
 
 After our survey of Heidenstam's poetry we may 
 naturally ask in how far his message may carry to 
 the world at large. May not this largely patriotic 
 master be of importance only to those of his own 
 speech and land ? To this we answer that there is 
 nothing which Heidenstam writes for Sweden that 
 is not almost equally applicable to any other country. 
 
 The problems he deals with, whether national or 
 personal, are our problems. As one of the great 
 fighting minds of this generation, he cannot fail to 
 inspire all earnest thinkers with whom he comes in 
 contact. Furthermore he is a great artist in present- 
 ing vivid scenes from the human drama, both sub- 
 jective and objective. He boldly represents life as 
 he knows it in the light of a militant, optimistic 
 imagination. It can therefore hardly be doubted 
 that, wherever his poetry can be made accessible, he 
 will exercise a quickening and exalting influence 
 at least equal to that of any poet now writing. 
 
 31

 
 THE MOGUL'S ROYAL RING. Royal Ring 
 
 The Mogul's ring had been missing 
 A hundred years and more. 
 They sought it, never ceasing, 
 They sought the city o'er. 
 
 To Hafed, then, the sweeper, 
 The story came one day. 
 He dropped his rubbish-barrel 
 And left it where it lay. 
 "The barrel grows more heavy 
 With every year," he said. 
 "I'll seek the royal signet 
 And set it on my head!" 
 
 With mattock, spade and pick-axe 
 He sought it day and night. 
 Alas! the golden signet — 
 He brought it ne'er to light. 
 When round his house at sunrise 
 He stole with trembling legs. 
 The crowd would come and pelt at 
 His back with rotten eggs. 
 
 He wept, he prayed, he dug still, 
 But when at night he'd lay 
 His turban by to bathe him. 
 His youthful hair was gray. 
 
 Umballa, Hafed 's brother, 
 
 35
 
 Royal Ring Lay meanwhile in the square, 
 Sunned him like any other, 
 And rubbed his shoulders there. 
 He snored mid swarms of midges. 
 He smiled to watch the fleas ; 
 He looked around and slapped, though, 
 When gadflies came to tease. — 
 He bought then for four coppers 
 The barrel, if you please. 
 
 The luckless folk who neared him 
 Would hold their noses tight; 
 The doors, as if they feared him, 
 Would shut in sudden fright ; 
 The huckster's fruit all scudded 
 In haste behind his bench: 
 Because that barrel flooded 
 The quarter with its stench. 
 
 Outside the town he quickly 
 Turned upside down the thing. 
 There lay, half-hid in sickly 
 Old cabbage-leaves, the ring!! 
 
 A hundred years 'twas missing 
 Despite all search, and now 
 Behold! it crowned, caressing, 
 Umballa's dusky brow. 
 
 Then through the horse-shoe gateways 
 A festal throng poured out. 
 36 ~
 
 The baker, — who had nightly Royal Ring 
 
 Seen visions all about, 
 
 Who dreamt he found the ring in 
 
 The middle of his dough, 
 
 Nor ceased till through the window 
 
 The morning sun would glow, — 
 
 Left bread i' th' oven, sprang out 
 
 And strewed with all his might 
 
 The flour from his trough there 
 
 Till all the road was white. 
 
 The smith, who erst had brooded, 
 
 His hammer at his foot. 
 
 So gladly smote the anvil 
 
 The air was thick with soot. 
 
 The cloth-merchant, who mid pipe-smoke 
 
 Had seemed so pale before, 
 
 Now piled brocades and silks on 
 
 His beast in goodly store. 
 
 He came and decked the barrel 
 
 In fig-leaf garlands green. 
 
 Then laid on pearls and rubies 
 
 And cloth of richest sheen. 
 
 And high thereon was borne, 
 
 Mid kettle-drums a-thunder, 
 
 Umballa, the Orient's wonder! 
 
 The victor, now, unable 
 To curb his pride, accosted 
 His brother, while a sable 
 Slave with an ibis wing 
 
 37 
 
 298607^
 
 Royal Ring His shoes devoutly dusted; 
 
 "Well, Hafed, where's the ring?" 
 
 Amid the joyful troop then 
 Pale Hafed kneeled forthright 
 And pressed to earth his forehead, 
 But now his hair was white. 
 
 He drove into his bosom 
 His long and crooked knife: 
 "The ring you found mid rubbish 
 I sought for with my life." 
 
 Since then good luck has never 
 Deceived Umballa's race. 
 Are diamonds trumps, they ever 
 Will hold the diamond ace. 
 
 That Hafed, too, had offspring 
 I freely may declare, 
 Who, young, within my bible 
 Now lay my first gray hair. 
 
 38
 
 MUCHAIL'S EVENING PRAYER. Evening 
 
 At sunset all the married Mussulmans of Kasan ^ 
 
 fell on their knees upon the flat roofs of the houses 
 and praised the One and cried: "I thank God that 
 I am not made a woman !" 
 
 Only the old Muchail, who was more than eighty 
 years old and had a whole life's experience, stood 
 erect with his arms crossed and knitted his brows 
 and cried or chanted loudly: 
 
 "Grimy with labor, to my home I reel, 
 Now that the glowing star of eve doth summon, 
 Keen as a glimmer on Damascus steel. 
 I grieve, oh God, I was not made a woman. 
 Not that meseemeth in Thy plan 
 A woman is more fair than is a man. 
 He is to her — such boldness doth endow 
 His form, and so half-rakish he doth pride him — 
 As is the fiery bull unto the cow 
 That licks her udder lazily beside him. 
 Nor soon in me the thought doth fade 
 That all of Kasan's town by man was made. 
 He doth not murmur, though he slave for both. 
 Late by the lamp he holds his weary session. 
 The while his women empty, nothing loth. 
 The sherbet glass, and prate of man's oppression. 
 'Twas his worn hand that dug the well, where 
 
 burst 
 The cooling streams that quench these women's 
 
 thirst. 
 
 39
 
 Evening Their house — 'tis man must bring the stones and 
 Prayer rear it. 
 
 Aye, give to each his burden, as is right! 
 
 I grieve but, God, for this . . . Oh, read my spirit! 
 
 I fain would be a woman that I might 
 
 Give unto man the love his virtues merit." 
 
 40
 
 THE THREE QUESTIONS. 
 
 An Isis statue stands in Nubia's plain, 
 
 Around it ancient ruins are reclining; 
 
 A pool lies near, a stone's throw from the fane. 
 
 The negro thinks, if, when the moon is shining. 
 
 He stands beside the statue on a night 
 
 Of Ramadan in vesture all of white 
 
 And turban, too, of white, — if then he throws 
 
 Three stones which he has blackened in the fire 
 
 Into the water where the moonlight glows, 
 
 Three questions will be solved to his desire. 
 
 If they all three the mirror chance to shatter, 
 He'll win the love of her he holds most dear, 
 Will live to ninety, die his tribe's ameer. 
 And fame throughout Sudan his praise will scatter. 
 
 'Tis night now, and a stately negro, stooping. 
 
 Waits, with the tamarisk shadows o'er him drooping. 
 
 Blue-white I see his muslin turban shine. 
 
 And on the sable head, in dimmer fashion, 
 
 I see the red lips, like a crimson gash on 
 
 The surface of a leather sack of wine. 
 
 So clear the desert moon, it gives the hue 
 
 Of day to all. Or does the morn awaken? 
 
 Yon tawny peak an odalisque form has taken. 
 
 Sitting there veiled in films of whitish-blue. 
 
 Three 
 Questions 
 
 Beneath a palm-tree near the statue bending. 
 He stands a while. He quickly lifts his hand. 
 
 41
 
 Three -^^^ short the stone strikes, leadenly descending: 
 
 Questions ^^^ name will ne'er be great in Sudan Land! 
 '^ He tears the loosened turban from his head. 
 
 He throws another blackened stone, but that is 
 Too far, it falls amid the trees' gray lattice; 
 That means his early death, a sign of dread ! 
 
 Frantic, amazed, hands clasped in desperate yearn- 
 ing, 
 As if in prayer, toward Isis' form he's turning. 
 He knows that now his deepest wishes lie 
 In that third stone, as on a falling die. 
 For if the stone into the pool he cast. 
 Though young, a beggar of the streets, he perish, 
 His desert-fiery love the hope may cherish 
 Ere then to reach the longed-for goal at last. 
 
 He throws the stone, mindless of everything. 
 Two sweat-drops bathe his forehead, cold 
 
 terror. 
 Then suddenly there splashes in the mirror 
 A silver-bordered, ever-widening ring. 
 
 with 
 
 42
 
 THE WEDDING OF THE SISTERS OF ISIS. Wedding of 
 
 the Sisters 
 I. 
 
 Prolog: Chorus of the Sisters of Isis. 
 
 Raise the garlands, O ye virgin sisters, 
 
 From your hair unto the drowsy night ! 
 
 O'er the desert now the twilight glisters. 
 
 Would the hour of evening ne'er took flight! 
 
 Would those girls of Thebes, each one so tender 
 
 Bearing to the well her polished jar. 
 
 Might be ever lovely, ever slender, 
 
 Ever youthful as to-night they are! 
 
 Would yon boys that on the mountains blue 
 
 To their flocks now call 
 
 Might stay children, and their lambkins too 
 
 Be but lambkins small ! 
 
 Lift your voices, virgins pure, in weeping. 
 
 O'er each myrtle wreath let sweet tears well ! 
 
 Bar the world from out the temple, keeping 
 
 But the sweet that in this eve doth dwell. 
 
 But the innocence of youthful creatures! 
 
 Let a refuge here for that be made. 
 
 Which with yonder boys and girls will fade, 
 
 Wearing only long-lost memory's features! 
 
 II. 
 
 After a listless day, when the cool of an eve In 
 December 
 
 43
 
 Wedding of Came like a rapture of rest upon Thebes, the over- 
 the Sisters thronged city, 
 
 Then did the handmaids of Isis meet on the roof 
 
 of the temple; 
 Vestured in white, they enringed a bowl of glittering 
 
 copper. 
 Brimful of water, it shone, the mighty bowl on its 
 
 tripod. 
 Oft was it used so, because in the stars it mirrored 
 
 could women 
 Skilled in star-cunning divine the joys and griefs of 
 
 the future. 
 
 Then did the eldest priestess, the ninety-year Bent- 
 
 Amenemma, 
 Heavily rise. On her breast a beaten-gold image of 
 
 Isis 
 Gleamed. From her tenderest years for that moon- 
 light faith she had striven. 
 Chaste and inviolate law of the pure, the gentle-eyed 
 
 Isis. 
 Strictly she governed the rest. Through the city, — 
 
 nay, throughout Egypt, — 
 Flew the insulting words that her savage tongue had 
 
 been hurling 
 Long against Hator-Secket, the Goddess of Pleasure. 
 
 She bowed her 
 Silently over the bowl and read in the fate-written 
 
 water. 
 
 44
 
 Anxious and hushed, the circle waited; but lo! with Wedding of 
 
 a sudden ^/^^ Sisters 
 
 Gesture she flung back her whitened hair! "Ye 
 
 priestesses holy, 
 Never the stars have given an answer more grim 
 
 than this evening. 
 Darkly, sepulchrally clanks a threatening doom 
 
 there above us : 
 One of us shall to-night so deeply sin, that atonement 
 Greater by sevenfold than the sin shall of us be 
 
 demanded." 
 
 Whispering then, the priestesses rose, but the pretty 
 
 Ahanna 
 Twitched the old woman's robe and said : "O worthy 
 
 high priestess. 
 Ask of the sinner's name, that she straight be exposed 
 
 without mercy!" 
 Lifting a hand as dried as a mummy, and moved 
 
 unto weeping. 
 Thus did the other reply, the ninety-year Bent- 
 
 Amenemma: 
 "Spare we that question to-night ; to-morrow it well 
 
 may be answered. 
 Seems not the blow sufficient to thee? Would my 
 
 zeal, then, be grateful. 
 If thou thyself should'st be crushed by the weight 
 
 of the starry foreboding?" 
 
 So she ended. And, foll'wing the bowl which the 
 sisters in silence 
 
 45
 
 Wedding of Carried, they slowly went down from the roof in 
 the Sisters mournful procession. 
 
 Eve became night, and around the failing fires in 
 
 the market 
 Shivering boys attended the voice of the teller of 
 
 stories. 
 Clad in his chequered coat with bells on sleeves and 
 
 on hem, he 
 Sang in the waning glare of the flame, which tinted 
 
 his figure 
 Ghastly pale as a powdered buffoon. On a height 
 
 in the desert, 
 Far from the market-place, far from the hundred 
 
 gates of the city. 
 Rose in stupendous bulk the dusky temple of Isis. 
 Open it was, as ever, but guarded by staring-eyed 
 
 sphinxes 
 And by the faith of mankind; — superstition and 
 
 faith are the same, lo! — 
 Through the pylon and fore-court the way was open 
 
 to all men. 
 Farther might none proceed, for there in the inner- 
 most shrine sat, — 
 Hewn of gray-black granite that came from afar in 
 
 the southland. 
 Rock-hard, mysteriously dark, and half concealed 
 
 in her mantle, — 
 46
 
 Isis, with Horus on knee, in her horns the disc of fVedding of 
 the full-moon. tke Sisters 
 
 Warden's place by the statue that night was assigned 
 
 to Ahanna. 
 Stiffly erect as the goddess; her chin, her cheek, and 
 
 her forehead 
 Vividly lighted with red, but with heavy shadows 
 
 extending 
 Over her eyes, she stood, her bare arms crossed on 
 
 her bosom. 
 Close to the altar-fire with its wind-blown, flickering 
 
 streamers. 
 Roused by a squeaking bat, that flew with wings 
 
 nearly singeing 
 Back and forth by the flame, she looked about and 
 
 beheld then — 
 Far through the lotos-columns, which all from bot- 
 tom to top were 
 Stained blue and red with symbolical pictures of 
 
 mythic tradition — 
 Deep in the darkness, a man in flowing raiment of 
 
 scarlet. 
 Pallid with consternation, she sprang back and held 
 
 o'er the fire 
 Hands outstretched in imploring as unto a spectre. 
 
 The Red One, 
 Carelessly humming, advanced to the light none the 
 
 less, and forthwith she 
 
 47
 
 Wedding of Knew him to be a priest of Hator, whose robe was 
 the Sisters embroidered 
 
 Down all its trailing expanse with figures of pipes 
 and of tambours. 
 
 Poised on a bull-like neck, his head rose straight and 
 
 defiant. 
 Jewels a-many he bore on his youthful arms, and 
 
 he chanted 
 Low, while his teeth shone white and the temple 
 
 rang with his laughter: 
 "I, merry Hator's priest, who have sipped till the 
 
 close of the evening 
 Wine sweet as ever was drunk in Thebes, the opu- 
 lent city. 
 Now have a tickling desire to eat here my supper 
 
 untroubled. 
 Toasting my loaf at the embers that glow on the 
 
 altar of Isis. 
 Sit, that we may divide it like brother and sister, 
 
 my darling! 
 Then, timid child, thou shalt give me thy lips for 
 
 a kiss to repay me." 
 
 Blushing red with shame and terror, the maiden 
 
 pushed from her 
 Sidewise the loaf that he broke so calmly over the 
 
 fire. 
 Frantic with haste, she caught from the altar utensils 
 
 a bell then, 
 48
 
 Massive its clapper of gold, with handle carven of W edding of 
 aniber the Sisters 
 
 Brought by seamen of Sidon from regions of utter- 
 most Thule. 
 
 Hollowly now in the lonely depths of the temple 
 resounded 
 
 Four quick metallic blows, like wing-beats close to 
 each other. 
 
 Harshly the great doors ground and sandals hur- 
 riedly pattered, 
 
 White-robed priestesses came from stairway and 
 passage ; amazed, they 
 
 Saw there the priest of Hator. But bitterly spoke 
 the high priestess. 
 
 Eldest among them all, the ninety-year Bent-Am- 
 enemma: 
 
 "This is the sin predestined. In Isis' presence our 
 sister 
 
 Stood with a man. In Isis' presence now must she 
 be offered ! 
 
 Sevenfold more than the sin the offering demanded, 
 and therefore 
 
 Six more, the youngest, I doom to fall by the knife 
 as atonement." 
 
 Therewith she felt for and drew a knife, but a 
 thunderous wind-gust 
 
 Blew out the altar-flame. The trembling, terrified 
 sisters, 
 
 Huddling close together, their prayers and formulas 
 muttered. 
 
 49
 
 Wedding of Bent-Amenemma, famed for supernatural wisdom, 
 the Sisters Spoke, after blowing asunder the heap of blackening 
 embers: 
 "Sisters, that was a sign to spare the young girls. 
 
 Let us hasten 
 Even to-night unto Thebes to the priests of Hator 
 for counsel!" 
 
 When with the sisters she neared the house of the 
 
 famed and audacious 
 Brothers of Hator, she heard a clamor of drinking 
 
 within it. 
 Stretched supine on a couch lay the jesting high 
 
 priest of the order. 
 Boys from Goshen were swinging on handles covered 
 
 with silver 
 Elegant peacock fans that shone with the gleam of 
 
 a hundred 
 Sapphires and emeralds. Then in time with the 
 
 tinkle of cithers 
 All arose for the dance. The caps and cloaks of 
 
 the dancers 
 Glittered with cloth of silver, with opals and gay- 
 colored tassels. 
 Darkly Bent-Amenemma stood forth in the midst of 
 
 the banquet's 
 Carelessly rippling commotion, and making her way 
 
 to the high priest, 
 
 50
 
 Spoke with accents of sternest command : "Thou fVedding of 
 prince of vain pleasures, the Sisters 
 
 Break off thy scandalous feast, let the juggling 
 fiddles be silent! 
 
 Cast off thy panther-skin dress and put on the rai- 
 ment of sorrow! 
 
 For by the stars a sin was foretold." The ninety- 
 year woman, 
 
 Pale and bent, would but tell in a whisper that 
 which had happened, 
 
 Writhing her hands in despair and terror, while 
 tears without ceasing 
 
 Poured down her wrinkled cheeks. The merry high 
 priest, as he heard her, — 
 
 He who, most like a child with friendly eyes full 
 of wonder. 
 
 Took his days as they came and strewed on him 
 legends and fancies; 
 
 He who, soon as a priest bore tidings of grief to 
 the dwelling. 
 
 Drove him forth with showers of figs and bunches 
 of wine-grapes, — 
 
 He, the lover of scoffing, was smitten with shame 
 and, embarrassed. 
 
 Knotted his fingers so tightly around the sable and 
 hairy 
 
 Goat-skin bottle of wine, that purple drops of the 
 vintage 
 
 Sprinkled his hand. — "My sister, oh wisdom- 
 renowned, my sister" — 
 
 51
 
 Wedding of Shy and abashed he began, and gave her his hand, 
 the Sisters o" whose fingers 
 
 Wine was glowing like blood. "But half is it 
 
 proved, oh my sister. 
 True, by the stars was foretold a sin, but the name 
 
 of the sinner 
 Thou did'st omit to ask. Bring thy bowl and seek 
 
 in the water 
 Whether the stars have writ that the sinner's name 
 is Ahanna!" 
 
 Now had the bowl been brought and set on its 
 
 copper-green tripod, 
 High aloft was it raised in the sheltered court of 
 
 the palace. 
 There did the southern stars through the limpid 
 
 night of the desert 
 Brightly gaze on the bowl. At the threshold-stone 
 
 in the doorway. 
 Diffident, stood the high priest. His brothers, who 
 
 else were accustomed 
 Only to revel and jest, were standing like boys newly 
 
 punished 
 Round the bowl of the sisters; the strains of music 
 
 were silent, 
 Sweet-breathing incense was quenched in the sandy 
 
 square of the courtyard. 
 
 Straight'ning her crooked back, out stepped then 
 
 Bent-Amenemma, 
 52
 
 Grim with menace, and read the far-famed oracular Wedding of 
 
 surface. the Sisters 
 
 Upright for long she stood, but slowly sank more 
 
 together. 
 Anxiously groping about with her fingers over her 
 
 kirtle. 
 Staring with fixed, keen gaze at the fiery star-script. 
 
 In horror 
 Trembling, she sank on her knees. Her chin and 
 
 cheek were sunk forward 
 Deep in the mirroring water. In dumb desperation 
 
 she clenched her 
 Teeth on the edge of the shimmering bowl, and fell 
 
 with an outcry 
 Vehemently back, while she dragged the bowl along 
 
 in her falling; 
 Drenched with the sacred water, she lay a-swoon in 
 
 the courtyard. 
 Forward the high priest hurried, he seized the hands 
 
 of his brothers 
 Warmly, nor did his attire, that shone with jeweled 
 
 adornments. 
 Gleam more brilliantly now than his eyes all radiant 
 
 with rapture. 
 Nodding, he shouted aloud, as amid the flutes 
 
 thrown aside there, 
 Fans, too, and trampled goblets, he went his way 
 
 through the courtyard: 
 
 "Thine was the sinner's name, thine own, oh Bent- 
 Amenemma! 
 
 53
 
 Wedding of When thou at Isis' foot drov'st away a man from 
 the Sisters thy sister, 
 
 Thou did'st wrong even Isis. Ah, why should we 
 
 ever be laying 
 Our false words on the lips of the gods? For these 
 
 women here wot of 
 Only one kind of sin, the sin to which others are 
 
 subject. 
 Wine, the kiss of a girl, and the daring jest that 
 
 will startle 
 Senile women and men — to the gods above these 
 
 are blameless. 
 Moon and stars and sun are gifts of the gods, but 
 
 so likewise 
 She the beloved of my youth and my loaf of bread. 
 
 As like brothers. 
 Sharing the loaf and the goat-skin flask, we are 
 
 sitting together, 
 In the convivial air sprouts the seed from which 
 
 may in secret 
 Grow the all-brothering hour. — The sacrifice of 
 
 atonement 
 Must be sevenfold more than the sin was. There- 
 fore, my sister. 
 Give to eternal Hator of Isis' handmaidens seven. 
 Day and night shall the seven, for thus I interpret 
 
 the judgment, 
 Ever be fettered, each one to the priest of Hator 
 
 she favors." 
 54
 
 Ill did the priestesses, though, repress their heart- 
 hidden gladness, 
 
 When they were dragged away mid the Hator 
 priests' exultation. 
 
 After the smith had been brought from Thebes, afar 
 through the desert 
 
 Rang the quick-riveting strokes of the hammer; but 
 when these were silent, 
 
 Loud to the lonely night from the fast-barred house 
 of the brothers 
 
 Rattling tambours proclaimed the nuptial feast of 
 the sisters. 
 
 Wedding of 
 the Sisters 
 
 III. 
 
 Epilog: Hymn of the Priests of Hator to Ptah. 
 
 As bounteous love shines bright in every thread 
 
 Of the rich robe the husband's hand hath spread 
 
 As gift for the beloved one of his soul. 
 
 So bright, O God, thy love shines from the whole. 
 
 O love-abounding God ! O Father good ! 
 
 Say, hast thou nearer to our threshold stood 
 
 Than now, when wine from goat-skin flasks is 
 
 streaming. 
 While gentle, string-sped music whispers low, 
 And we, the sons of hate, are brothers, deeming 
 That all the world with peace and love must glow? 
 If thou hast wrought whatever we perceive, 
 In evil also — we must then believe — 
 Reflected glimmers of thy glory shine. 
 
 55
 
 Wedding of Thus evil, too, is as a child of thine. 
 the Sisters What God hath wrought must needs be free of 
 blame. 
 What mortals "wickedness" and "sin" may name 
 Is wickedness and sin but in their sight. 
 There is a heavenly voice which earth misjudges 
 quite. 
 
 56
 
 THE FIG-TREE. The Fig-Tree 
 
 Welcome, thou cool oriental evening, welcome ! 
 After the hot day thou art as a pitcher of water after 
 a ride in the desert. Thou art as a pale young wife, 
 who from the hill beckons home the sweating toiler 
 of the fields. Thou art like the Tartar jeweler's 
 opal, for thy color shifts between the white of milk 
 and the glowing red of wine in the same manner 
 that thy joy shifts between healthful, strengthening 
 repose and enkindling merriment. 
 
 With this apostrophe I saluted the evening and 
 reined up my jenny in a small ravine which clam- 
 bered up toward Jerusalem. The city lay on a 
 height, with its surrounding wall and its cupola-ed 
 white houses, like a four-cornered basket full of 
 eggs. Before the city gate, white-clad widows were 
 sitting motionless at the graves of their husbands, 
 mirrored in a great, quiet, colorless pool. 
 
 All at once came the dusk. The road of the 
 ravine became full of people — for the time of the 
 Passover was drawing near. 
 
 At the door of a small cottage, where women were 
 preparing supper, was seated Christ, the Brotherer. 
 Although His face could not be wholly distinguished, 
 because the light of an oil-lamp within the house fell 
 upon his back, yet one could tell at once who He 
 was. His dark hair hung in rough luxuriance 
 
 57
 
 The Fig-Tree down to His knees. His white prophet's garment 
 was frayed, His feet dusty. With His left hand He 
 compressed the nozzle of a leather skin of wine. 
 Whenever one of the friends who were sitting with 
 crossed legs in a circle about him attempted to rise, 
 He pressed him back to his place again and offered 
 him drink. No cares, no thought of labor came to 
 disturb the still evening joy. 
 
 Then arose, unobserved, Judas, the Jew of Jews. 
 His well-tended hands and feet were white as mar- 
 ble, and the nails carefully polished. He did not 
 wipe the sweat from his forehead with a fold of his 
 garment as did the other disciples, but drew out 
 always a long Roman handkerchief. His clean- 
 shaven, prosperous-looking face with its small, sedate, 
 intelligent eyes was altogether that of the sober, dis- 
 creet man of property. 
 
 He stole away softly behind the cottage on the 
 road to Jerusalem, while his green head-cloth flut- 
 tered among the twisted black olive trees. He smote 
 himself on the forehead and spoke half-aloud, and 
 it was not difficult to divine his thoughts. 
 
 What does it lead to, thought he, if one follow 
 this man who forbids us to work and to think of 
 the future, and upon whose head they have finally 
 set a price ? Have not I year by year and day by day 
 saved coin after coin? There lack but thirty pieces 
 of silver — but thirty! — and I shall be sitting under 
 my own fig-tree. — 
 58
 
 Involuntarily I reached for a stone. Then Christ, The Fig-Tree 
 the Brotherer, arose in the lighted doorway. 
 
 "Thou art still young," he called out to me. 
 "Thy first thought upon thine own fig-tree shall go 
 forth and sell me." 
 
 Meanwhile the ravine became so dark that nothing 
 could any longer be distinguished. All sank back 
 into tlie Orient's indescribable stillness, a stillness 
 that has brought forth prophets. But from that 
 evening I understood them who desire that no man 
 shall possess an oicn fig-tree. 
 
 59
 
 What Shall WHAT SHALL I THINK? 
 
 / Think? 
 
 When Mahmoud Khan, elated by the wine 
 
 Of conquest, entered Sumnat's plundered shrine, — 
 
 WTiere to the columns breaking the expanse 
 
 Of swamps, illimitable, foul and dreary. 
 
 His soldiers tied their chargers, battle-weary. 
 
 And now drew lots for captured shield and lance, — 
 
 Right against Shiva's giant image, towering 
 
 Sternly, in shining silver all arrayed. 
 
 With sixteen arms and one great eyeball glowering, 
 
 He raised his famed and dreaded blade, — 
 
 Evilest of sledges 
 
 That the evilest smith 
 
 (As the East alleges) 
 
 E'er smote anvil with. 
 
 Inside the court, where the dim sun, declining. 
 
 Shed spectral green on pool and colonnade, 
 
 And fettered hounds with blood-stained whips were 
 
 flayed, 
 'Twas black with men save for their helmets' shin- 
 ing. 
 Here cups and fans and dancers' robes were scat- 
 tered ; 
 There amid laugh and shriek were women led. 
 By ropes that cut their bare knees till they bled, 
 Past elephants and captured idols, battered, 
 With heads knocked off in one of the caprices 
 Found in all minds of true barbarian mould, 
 60
 
 Mid drinking-vessels, too, of tarnished gold, What Shall 
 
 And skins of Kashmir goats with silken fleeces. / Think? 
 
 A Brahmin gray 
 
 Timidly stepped into the conqueror's way. 
 
 His small head stuck absurdly out 
 
 From his great cap with silver fringed about 
 
 Like a potato from a silver cup. 
 
 To Shiva's altar he advanced forthright, 
 
 And, feverishly trembling, then spoke up: 
 
 "Hurl in thy wrath, O Mahmoud Khan, to-night 
 
 My body to the temple-river eels. 
 
 But tell what thought at thy brown forehead's base is 
 
 Of man, the thought that boundlessly disgraces 
 
 All manhood as thy nature it reveals!" 
 
 The chieftain smiled with aspect so appalling 
 
 That his own warriors hid their eyes before 
 
 The blow. Therewith they heard his weapon falling 
 
 With hollow sound as on a dungeon door. 
 
 Now sprang, when Shiva's form in twain was 
 
 crumbled. 
 Out of the cloven belly far and wide 
 A rainbow fount of gems on every side, 
 Where diamonds, sapphires, pearls, and mohurs 
 
 tumbled. 
 All of the temple's spoil, a very glut 
 From rajah's harem and from peasant's hut. 
 From widows and from orphans, there was gleaming 
 In open day before the robber horde. 
 
 61
 
 What Shall Like peas from an inverted basket streaming, 
 
 / Think? The great pearls down the polished stairway poured. 
 
 So Mahmoud Khan smiled grimly once again, 
 And to the gray old Brahmin answered then, 
 While the old man so shook to see his pelf 
 That the eleven bells which fringed his vest 
 Tinkled with ruby tongues their tiny best: 
 "When man's god is the priesthood's money-chest, 
 What shall I think, forsooth, of man himself?" 
 
 62
 
 DJUFAR'S SONG. Djufar's 
 
 Song 
 In Tanta, city of the dancing-girls, 
 
 Where white and yellow cotton-blossoms grow, 
 
 Where maize-fields fringe the delta-ed Nile with 
 
 green, 
 
 And water-wheels are turned by bufifalo, — 
 
 In that same town old Djufar lived, a man 
 
 Famed for his tongue, for he had power to rhyme 
 
 With the long verses that the Orient loves 
 
 In rhythm to the merry dancers' time. 
 
 So well he sang the town — its minarets. 
 
 Its hundred dove-towers, and its market-place — 
 
 That the charmed listener sprang not up to dance, 
 
 But rather wept, his hand before his face. 
 
 Early one morn he sat beside his door, 
 Full-clad, though still the rising sun was red. 
 Then all the maidens at the fountain cried : 
 "Djufar's composing, he's forgot his bed, 
 So that this evening when mid hashish fumes. 
 Barefooted, to the sound of flutes we dance 
 The veil-dance, he may sing and lure us first 
 To laughter and anon to tears, perchance." 
 
 Then answered Djufar: "Have I time for song, 
 I, whom a desert grave will soon devour? 
 Not even for my slumber would I lose 
 So cool and exquisite a morning hour." 
 
 63
 
 Djufar's Then cried the youngest girl, as with a laugh 
 Song She set on her black hair the jar of clay: 
 
 "Our friend is over-old to poetize. 
 
 Why, when will Djufar be a hundred, pray?" 
 
 Enraged, the bent old man arose and strewed 
 Crumbs for his doves with visage all a-frown. 
 But when he saw the cupolas that swelled 
 Like clustered grapes above his native town. 
 And looked across the plain, his aspect cleared. 
 "Come then, were I a hundred years and more, 
 My ancient tongue would still have strength to sing 
 While yonder scene was spread around my door." 
 
 They shouted. People hurried from the town 
 And sat as round a camp-fire in a mass ; 
 The drummer brought his kettle-drum along. 
 Of fish-skin spread across a bowl of brass. 
 At length, when the musicians formed a ring. 
 Their flutes uplifted, lutes upon the knee. 
 And slender rebecs with the strings on pegs 
 Of bright wood from the Indian sandal-tree. 
 And when in the soft motion of the dance 
 The coin that on each maiden's brow was set 
 Began to glitter like a spark of fire, 
 Djufar approached the fountain-parapet. 
 
 He carefully drew out a scroll and pen 
 
 From the long silver sheath where they were stored 
 
 And snapped the ink-horn open that had hung 
 
 64
 
 Beside him on a yellow silken cord. Djiifar's 
 
 Untroubled calm lay over all the place, Song 
 
 On Silence's forever silent land, 
 
 The land of lethargy, hushed Egypt, where 
 
 The very wave breaks voiceless on the strand. 
 
 Sleeping flamingoes lined the bank! A boat 
 
 Swam down the yellow mirror of the tide. 
 
 Its after-cabin painted green and red. 
 
 Drifting with neither oar nor sail to guide. 
 
 Old Djufar mounted on the parapet 
 
 Solemnly, like an actor much-renov/ned. 
 
 And mothers raised their little children up 
 
 To wait his song — but Djufar made no sound. 
 
 His eyes dilated and glowed out beneath 
 
 His forehead, which was brown as darkened leather, 
 
 And in his eagerly uplifted hand 
 
 Against the blue sky shone the pen's white feather. 
 
 He moved his lips in silence, he who oft 
 
 Had charmed forth tears and laughter from the rest 
 
 Both with his verses and his ringing voice 
 
 Now let his chin sink slowly to his breast. 
 
 He turned him from the folk and with a sleeve 
 Of his burnous he covered all his head. 
 He burst out weeping. He let fall his pen 
 And back into his lowly home he fled. 
 
 Then cried the foremost maiden: "In good truth 
 Djufar is fated never to be stirred 
 
 65
 
 Djufar's By poet rapture more." — The next went home 
 Song In anger from the fountain, but the third 
 
 Beckoned to the musicians not to go. 
 Then where the scroll lay wet with tears she bent, 
 She raised it up, and, followed by the folk 
 To merry string- and drum-notes forth she went. 
 She bore it to the city's tranquil shrine. 
 Where in an aisle the scroll was kept, and long 
 Did Tanta's daughters come to kiss it there. 
 Thinking the while of Djufar's silent song. 
 
 The eye-joy that the Orient affords. 
 
 No man with rows of signs can teach the soul ; 
 
 But ancient Djufar paints the ecstasy 
 
 Most truly on his tear-stained, empty scroll. 
 
 66
 
 THE FICKLE MAN Fickle Man 
 
 Among many partly damaged Arabic manuscripts 
 which Abu Barak, the book-seller, sat and spelled out 
 by the light of his horn lantern, the uppermost had 
 the following tenor: 
 
 Damascus, in the third year of Caliph Osman's 
 reign and the forty-first after his birth. May the 
 One grant to him and to all of you a peaceful year ! 
 
 I can respect, perhaps even admire the man who 
 lives according to rule, who is looked upon as a 
 pattern, who even from his earliest youth falls into 
 a given path, and dutifully and composedly follows 
 it until he dies, surrounded by well-nurtured chil- 
 dren. When I talk with him, however, it is as 
 though I conversed with a very inexperienced and 
 one-sided person. He has never been in a condition 
 to test life from many sides. He has never by a 
 violent impulse cast aside a piece of work already 
 begun and attempted something new. The fickle 
 man, on the contrary, because of frequently giving 
 himself with renewed zeal to new enterprises, gains 
 an assured experience in all, a rich versatility. I 
 love the fickle man. His changes of mood remind 
 me of the changing facets of a jewel. His conversa- 
 tion delights my ear in the same way as the gay 
 arabesques in the mosque of Ispahan delight my eye. 
 It is as though his mind were constructed of finer 
 and more sensitive material than those of others. 
 If he advances an opinion to-day, he will perhaps 
 
 67
 
 Fickle Man to-morrow attack it, because his mind is utterly 
 carried away by his adversary's observations and 
 arguments. In just this way he generally comes 
 nearer the truth than anyone else, and if he makes 
 a mistake, he quickly corrects it himself. What is 
 in reality an immovable conviction? Is it not one- 
 sidedness, obstinacy, spiritual sluggishness, or a pre- 
 sumptuous belief in one's own judgment? What a 
 great gift it is to be able to put oneself instantly into 
 another's thoughts and ideas, what a nimbleness of 
 soul! The fanatic, the opposite of the fickle man, 
 lacks this power entirely ; he sticks fast to an opinion 
 and goes to death for it as if it were the greatest 
 truth in the world, although often it proves in time 
 to be the greatest falsehood in the world. His 
 narrow one-sidedness reminds us of the sort of men 
 whom we call wooden-headed. Why should one 
 enclose only a single hardened thought, a single 
 kernel, like the insignificant little plum, instead of 
 a hundred seeds like the great splendid melon ? The 
 God of the Christians hides three persons in one, 
 but the fickle man at least ten. To associate with 
 him has therefore the same variety as to associate 
 with several persons at once. If a man were con- 
 stantly clever or constantly high-minded, he would 
 easily be looked up to as more than a common man. 
 It appears therefore as if cleverness and high- 
 mindedness by a sort of destiny more seldom belonged 
 to the constant character than to the fickle — who, 
 however, always brings himself down to the level 
 68
 
 of a common man, because immediately after a Fickle Alan 
 
 clever speech or noble action he says something 
 
 stupid or does something blameworthy. The fickle 
 
 man's friendliness is the warm and sincere impulse 
 
 of the moment and has therefore a peculiar charm. 
 
 An affront from him is less grievous, because one 
 
 knows that he will straightway turn around and 
 
 make amends. Yes, I love the fickle man and am 
 
 glad when I obtain his friendship, although I am 
 
 compelled every day to win it anew. On the other 
 
 hand, the friendship which I have enshrined in the 
 
 constant man looks after itself ; it becomes with him 
 
 a sort of obligation — and I myself hardly ever think 
 
 of it. 
 
 69
 
 A Theme A THEME WITH TWO VARIATIONS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Many a man who quietly lays his head on the 
 block has swooned at a prick under the finger-nail. 
 Nekir and Munkar, the angels who record the 
 actions of mankind, had every day unconcernedly 
 made entry of the heaviest sins, but they were much 
 startled and became almost pale with terror when 
 once upon a time they heard a pious man on the 
 threshold of Paradise thank God that He had pro- 
 tected him against frivolity, the commonest sin on 
 earth. Since Nekir and Munkar were not fully 
 agreed as to what he meant by this never-before- 
 mentioned sin, they commanded the most frivolous 
 man on earth to show himself. 
 
 So Don Juan came, guffawing and whistling. 
 It was impossible to get a serious word from him, 
 but a Jew to whom he had pawned his plate pointed 
 at him and whispered in passing: "Dot man amuses 
 himself all de time und iss shoost mad about pretty 
 vimmen ! Coot-bye!" 
 
 Nekir answered : "To use every hour of his short 
 life is, as long as others don't suffer from it, no sin 
 in our sight, though it may be in that of the narrow 
 but possibly needful laws of men. It was not he 
 whom we meant." 
 
 After that the Recording Angels repeated their 
 command. Thereupon, timid and trembling, came 
 70
 
 Sheik Rifat Hassan, who died long ago. He knelt A Theme 
 
 and sobbed: "Oh Munkar, I lived the first forty 
 
 years of my life in such a whirl of pleasure that for 
 
 the remaining forty I had to go about as a sick 
 
 beggar." 
 
 Then answered Munkar: "My friend, to sacrifice 
 the worst forty years of one's life in order to have 
 double enjoyment from the best is no frivolity. 
 That is taking life seriously." 
 
 After that the Recording Angels for the third 
 time summoned the most frivolous man living. But 
 no one answered. There was silence over all the 
 earth. 
 
 For the fourth and fifth time they repeated the 
 summons without answer. They only heard in the 
 distance a lengthy, apathetic yawning, and a ridicu- 
 lous, emaciated old man approached. He stood still 
 and cried out insolently and defiantly: "What is it 
 ye desire to know? Ask of me! I am Diogenes 
 and am so wise that I scorn the pleasures of life." 
 
 Then answered Nekir: "In that thou deemest 
 thyself wise, thou art a blockhead. In that thou 
 failest to make use of well-tasting meat and drink, 
 of beautiful furnishings and garments and all the 
 trifles that in their measure gladden the short space 
 of life, thou art frivolous." 
 
 Therewith Nekir dipped his pen and inscribed in 
 his book the following: Number 5,989,700,402. 
 Diogenes. The world's most frivolous man. 
 
 71
 
 A Theme II. 
 
 In one of the spreading valleys overgrown with 
 peach-trees hard by Sana in Araby the Blest, Ildis, 
 the Turkish governor's daughter, had wreathed a 
 mighty garland. In her joy at the silent, limpid 
 Oriental evening she resolved to present the garland 
 to that man of Sana's inhabitants who best under- 
 stood how to use the moment. 
 
 In her great childishness she asked the watchman 
 at the city gate where she could find this man. He 
 led her straightway to a writer of books. Who in 
 Sana knew not the name of the writer of books? 
 With hurried step he was going back and forth in 
 his garden. Finally he stood still with an air of 
 satisfaction and murmured: "At length I discern 
 clearly wherein 3'our charm consists, O evening of 
 the Orient!" Thereafter he wrote on a slip of 
 paper the following: 
 
 What is thy beauty. Orient Land, 
 Thou desert region of stones and sand. 
 With bare, parched mountain-wall? 
 
 'Tis color and silence all ! 
 Throw o'er the sunlight Europa's glum 
 October clouds wtih their dark-gray scowl. 
 And set on the mountain a man with a drum, 
 
 And the Orient Land would be foul! 
 
 As soon as he had written down the last exclama- 
 tion mark he sank down weary on a bench and went 
 to sleep forthwith. Ildis looked at him and said: 
 72
 
 "As thou art a writer of books, !t is thy fortune to A Theme 
 be unfortunate. As thou art so unfortunate as to 
 pluck apart every impression, thou dost rob thy life 
 of all joy. — Let us go further!" 
 
 The watchman led her now to the market-place 
 to a wealthy tallow-chandler. This man had passed 
 his entire youth in a damp vault with his chandlery. 
 His provision for the future had never won him a 
 day's leisure. Still he was sitting on the steps of 
 his house, evidently broken-down and in his dotage, 
 but provided for. 
 
 Ildis shook her head and turned toward him. 
 "My friend, when thou didst labor for the morrow, 
 thou wert a self-betrayer, because even before night 
 thou might'st have lain on a bier. When thou didst 
 offer up thy youth for thy age, thou wert a spend- 
 thrift who bought pebbles for diamonds." 
 
 At last the watchman became impatient, shrugged 
 his shoulders, and moodily retired, while his big 
 slippers flapped on the stone pavement. 
 
 Night had already come on, and Ildis noted with 
 alarm that she had arrived in front of the forbidding 
 hovel which was inhabited by Muchail, the city 
 swineherd, a giaour of ill-repute, on whom the 
 writer of books had composed the following epigram: 
 
 Muchail exalts the noble three, 
 Tobacco, dancing-girls and wine. 
 By day the city swineherd he. 
 By night he is the city swine. 
 
 73
 
 A Theme Ildis looked anxiously about her at the empty 
 street. Through the half-open door she made out 
 the handsome, curly-haired Muchail, a fellow of 
 scarce twenty, who in the faintly lighted room was 
 talking in a low voice with a friend. He cast two 
 copper coins on the table and cried to his comrade : 
 
 "One coin shall be thine. I am but a poor swine- 
 herd, seest thou, but the little that I earn I always 
 divide with my friends on condition that they imme- 
 diately spend it. Do thou buy a little tobacco and 
 wine, and I'll knock at the house of the dancing- 
 girls. A piastre is only a fish-hook with which one 
 catches a little much-sought-after goldfish that is 
 called Happiness. While the others of the city quite 
 absurdly hoard up fish-hooks, let us to-night catch 
 the fish themselves!" 
 
 The maiden felt that she was red with blushes. 
 She stepped back a couple of steps into the bright, 
 glad southern moonlight which outlined her shadow 
 on the door. She hesitated, cautiously thrust off her 
 slippers, and finally, barefoot, stepped stealthily up 
 on the stone threshold, hung the great garland on 
 the key and kissed it. Then she took the slippers in 
 her hand and sprang quickly away in the shadow of 
 the houses as if she had done something wicked. 
 
 74
 
 THE HAPPY ARTISTS. Happy 
 
 Artists 
 Yes, human beings, — these same bulks we see 
 
 In square and street since, doubtless to oppress them, 
 
 The clothes-idea struck man's family, — 
 
 Have form and color, if they but undress them. 
 
 I stretched my canvas, took up w^ith precision 
 
 My charcoal. Then the model in that cold 
 
 And blue-gray light let fall her garment's fold, 
 
 And a nude beauty stood before our vision. 
 
 We merry lads w^ere seated all around, 
 
 While through the frosted w^indows came up-soaring 
 
 The muffled, multitudinous thunder-sound 
 
 Of smoky Paris, like Niagara's roaring. 
 
 I was the youngest student, to my woe. 
 
 How gladly I recall now the occasion 
 
 In the first week when I as "le nouveau" 
 
 Danced for my fellow-students' delectation, 
 
 Wearing a mighty Phrygian chapeau ! 
 
 Each man politely bade me buy him soap; 
 
 If I forgot, though, I should get a thwacking. 
 
 With punch I sued for grace, but had to mope 
 
 In thirst while all the rest their lips were smacking. 
 
 I had to serve our Baal, the fire-place. 
 Which glowed like any wine-warm prelate's face. 
 My blue-and-yellow matchbox with a snicker 
 They scrutinized, and straightway bade me spell 
 
 75
 
 Happy For hours together "sä-ker-hets-tänd-stickor" 
 Artists And say: "The Swedish language sounds like hell." 
 I soon made friends and, better yet, what ho ! 
 One day my youthful happiness was doubled 
 When o'er the threshold slouched a fresh "nouveau," 
 And I had rest while he in turn was troubled. 
 
 We were like mad-cap boys and acted so. 
 What painter lacks the impulse or the leisure 
 To climb forthwith the giddiest peak of pleasure, 
 When his tobacco and his punch-bowl glow, 
 Like sunny morning with new-fallen snow, 
 Such was the spirit of our band's employment. 
 What clamor at the Cafe Star there was 
 Among these men, who sent their brains to grass 
 And took the whole world for their eyes' enjoyment! 
 Across their pencil-butts benignly gazing. 
 They saw the gorgeous town and the attire 
 Of long-gloved ladies, costumes quite amazing: 
 Their eyes' delight was all they could desire. 
 
 And yet their handwork never wholly filled me, 
 Though I with charcoal sought to play my part. 
 I had at home a shelf of books that thrilled me. 
 I scanned the world through printed symbol swart, 
 And through the beggar's rags I strove to see 
 The inner man. I looked unceasingly 
 With my cold mind and with my burning heart. 
 Time's war-cry in the din I could betoken. 
 In wrath I gripped my charcoal with the will 
 76
 
 To make it glow; I tried my utmost skill, Happy 
 
 A foot I drew, a heel — with that 'twas broken. Artists 
 
 Paris I wept not for, but jealous, lonely, 
 I bade farewell to that gay artist set, 
 Who with small genius of the soul had yet 
 A genius gathered in the eye-sight only. 
 
 77
 
 Nameless NAMELESS AND IMMORTAL 
 
 and 
 
 Immortal Finished, in Paestum's rose-embowering garden, 
 
 Stood Neptune's temple, and the man who planned 
 Sat near. His young wife, on his shoulder leaning, 
 Spun with the yellow distaff in her hand. 
 She listened to the piping of the herdsmen 
 Who tended on the hills their droves of swine, 
 And with an almost childish joy she murmured, 
 Twisting the flax about her fingers fine : 
 "My cup of happiness is filled to brimming. 
 The man who brings me home to Naxos' strand, 
 Now he has built yon glorious Neptune temple. 
 Returns, immortal, to his native land." 
 
 Then solemnly her husband answered her: 
 
 "No, when we die, our name will pass away 
 
 A few years after, but yon temple there 
 
 Will still be standing as it stands to-day. 
 
 Think you an artist in his time of power 
 
 Sees in the background multitudes that shout? 
 
 Nay, inward, only inward, turns his eye. 
 
 And he knows nothing of the world without. 
 
 'Tis therefore that the bard would weep hot blood 
 
 If he deliver not his pregnant soul ; 
 
 But he would kiss each line wherein he sees 
 
 His spirit live again, true-born and whole. 
 
 'Tis in such lines as these he lives and moves. 
 
 He strives for immortality — but mark! 
 
 'Tis for his writings, never for himself ; 
 
 78
 
 The man's true reputation is his work. Nameless 
 
 What 's Homer? At the very best a myth! and 
 
 We seek to clasp a more enduring fame. Immortal 
 
 We see the pulses leap on Homer's brow, 
 For 'Iliad' has become his mighty name." 
 
 He rose, as if to go, but suddenly 
 She caught him by the cloak and held him fast 
 And murmured, while a hundred smiles dissolved 
 In the one look that furtively she cast: 
 "Still on a column there your name is carved. 
 If this proud vaunt be earnest, as you say, 
 Take from among the tools there at your feet 
 The biggest sledge and hew the name away !" 
 
 He turned, he shot at her a keen, quick glance, 
 But when she sat there calmly as before, 
 Twisting the flax into an even thread 
 And gazing at the masts along the shore, 
 He bent him down impulsively and took 
 The biggest sledge ; his knuckles were distended 
 And then grew white as wax, so hard he gripped 
 Upon the haft. The lifted sledge descended. 
 It scattered sparks from out the column's side, 
 And at his feet the steps were sprinkled o'er 
 With rain of pointed shards. From that time forth 
 The temple bore the artist's name no more. 
 
 Then with a cry of joy his young wife sprang 
 Quickly from flax and distaff to the place, 
 
 79
 
 Nameless And mid the scattered fragments of his fame 
 
 and She fell and clasped his knees in her embrace. 
 
 Immortal "Ah, now," she cried, "no words can tell my joy, 
 
 As we return to Naxos whence we came. 
 
 Now is my lord a thousand times more great 
 
 And 'Psestum's Temple' is his mighty name!" 
 
 So evening fell. A single ship went out 
 With lowered sail, a Naxos flag had she. 
 Slowly she rowed far out against the sun 
 And vanished on the mirror of the sea. 
 
 A thousand years and more have passed away, 
 Leveling Paestum with the verdant plain. 
 But still the temple stands, and in its shade 
 The fiddlers wake Arcadian joys again. 
 The master's name may no man surely know, 
 But all who see the temple's gleaming height 
 May see his very soul in yonder form 
 • ' And share to-day the architect's delight. 
 He is to me an old beloved friend — 
 Though far away, I know him in good truth — 
 A schoolmate, brother, comrade of my youth. 
 
 80
 
 FROM "THOUGHTS IN LONELINESS." "Thoughts 
 
 in 
 *■' Loneliness'^ 
 
 The Spark. 
 
 There Is a spark dwells deep within my soul. 
 
 To get it out into the daylight's glow 
 
 Is my life's aim both first and last, the whole. 
 
 It slips away, it burns and tortures me. 
 That little spark is all the wealth I know; 
 That little spark is my life's misery. 
 
 IL 
 
 An Elder Day. 
 
 In solitude my life-years drift away; 
 I babble to my dog, I stir my fire. 
 I do not feel the loss of yesterday, 
 'Tis hours fled long since that I desire. 
 When yonder bent and grizzled serving-man 
 Who brought my supper in was young. 
 When, children yet, my parents played among 
 The grasses, ere my life began. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Childhood Scenes. 
 
 I've longed for home these eight long years, I know. 
 I long in sleep as well as through the day. 
 
 81
 
 "Thoughts I long for home, I seek where'er I go — 
 
 Ifi Not men-folk, but the fields where I would stray, 
 
 Loneliness" '^^^ stones where as a child I used to play. 
 
 V. 
 
 ^ The Shifting Self. 
 
 Each night my old self in the grave I lay 
 
 And get me another on waking. 
 
 With a hundred thoughts I begin the day, 
 
 Not one to my slumber-time taking. 
 
 'Twixt sorrow and joy I roam without pause ; 
 
 I seem like a riddle, none dafter. 
 
 But lucky is he who for any cause, 
 
 Can burst into tears or laughter. 
 
 VII. 
 
 My Mother. 
 
 As years would fade, I often kept returning 
 
 To an old empty house, deserted quite, 
 
 Its hundred windows burning 
 
 With vivid sunset light. 
 
 Opening and closing, anxiously I strayed there 
 
 From room to room, but found no clocks that swayed 
 
 their 
 Bright pendulums, nor furniture beneath. 
 To the last room I came. Displayed there 
 Upon the wall in withered wreath 
 
 82
 
 A dark, half-ruined picture hung: "Thoughts 
 
 A small, old dame in black arrayed, — ;« 
 
 A starched cap round her comely features clung. Loneliness" 
 
 And yonder woman, silently portrayed 
 
 On canvas dark, I saw when I was young, 
 
 She prayed my life might have a worthy goal. 
 
 And 'twas her picture, when all else was gone, 
 
 That still was left me, that alone. 
 
 Yon empty dwelling was my soul. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Fame. 
 
 You seek for fame; but I would choose another 
 
 And greater blessing: so to be forgotten 
 
 That none should hear my name ; no, not my mother. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Obedience. 
 
 Now even-song is ringing, 
 
 I ride to win me rest. 
 
 My steed, let us be springing 
 
 Out into the glowing west! 
 
 How glad among men my life would be, 
 
 Were not "Obey!" our A and Z! 
 
 If the world had one mouth like a great black well 
 And should cry as loud as a booming bell : 
 "Obey, or in fetters double 
 
 83
 
 "Thoughts Of iron and wood thou shalt straight be bound!" 
 ifi I hardly should take the trouble 
 
 Loneliness" "^^ \o6k up and glance around. 
 
 If the Lord of the World from an evening cloud 
 Should thunder "Obey!" with menacings loud, 
 I would answer: "Lower your voice, God, pray, 
 And perhaps I shall hear what you say!" 
 
 My steed so strong, 
 
 Not yet do I long 
 
 For my stuffy home and the stove. 
 
 Keep on for an hour, for twain maybe ! 
 
 And you purchase for me 
 
 Two hours of the respite I love. 
 
 X. 
 
 Helpless Animals. 
 
 If I should have a friend, one only friend. 
 And that friend slew a helpless beast and gave 
 His hand, to which of late mine warmly clave. 
 Though I still longed an answering grasp to lend, 
 My hand with his I never more would blend. 
 
 If he lay sick, the friend who had the heart 
 To slay a helpless beast, and felt the smart 
 Of thirst, and I was sitting there beside him 
 On his last night, no drink would I provide him, 
 But fill and drain my gla§s, and so depart. 
 84
 
 XII. "Thoughts 
 
 The Trap. in 
 
 A ^ . ^ T' 1 • Loneliness" 
 
 A cunning trap 1 m laying. 
 
 Your love I have truly sought, 
 
 But just as you w^ill be saying 
 
 Deep down in your inmost thought: 
 
 "I'll give the bad man his due then, 
 My heart that he's begged so long;" 
 I'll turn my back on you then 
 And make a merry song. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Cup. 
 
 A mighty cup my sires possessed, 
 A mighty great pew^ter cup. 
 My heart is warmed as I fill it up 
 And lift it on high with a zest. 
 
 Then out of the ale sighs an ancient song, 
 Like torches the strophes flame. 
 God grant that our children may hear it long 
 While of us it murmurs the same! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Self-Impatience. 
 
 Within my heart of hearts I'm well advised 
 That I am worst among the men I know of. 
 
 85
 
 "Thoughts Not only friends I mean, but this is so of 
 lyi All those as well whom I have most despised. 
 
 Loneliness" 
 
 When comes the day when, j'oung and strong for 
 
 strife 
 I may step forth and prove with eager passion 
 The tithe of greatness in my composition 
 And for a sacred cause yield up my life? 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Insight. 
 
 I've searched half the world over everywhere 
 For a place that I fairest might call. 
 So lovely, though, were they all 
 That none could well be most fair. 
 
 Take all that is mine or mine can be, 
 But leave me my one best gift: 
 That scenes may delight me, uplift. 
 Which another scarcely would see. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 A Farewell. 
 
 You cared for me, and at your behest 
 
 I'd have laid my all at your feet. 
 
 But late I'd have given the world, my sweet, 
 
 For your heart, your lips, your breast. 
 
 86
 
 But luckj' our love, ever hid from sight, "Thoughts 
 
 Which bound not for weal or for woe /^j 
 
 Till it languished away, till we slew it outright Loneliness" 
 By faults neither one could forego ! 
 
 What can be forgotten with years, forget! 
 Cast me out as a corpse might be cast! 
 This mournful dream of our love may be yet 
 A memory of youth at the last. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Self-Atonement. 
 
 Too proud am I to see another suffer 
 
 A death abhorred 
 
 My guilt to ease; 
 
 Too tender to look on when Christ should offer 
 
 To thorns his forehead — 
 
 My thorns are these. 
 
 For my life's care, in my heart I hide it. 
 
 The sin that I on man and beast have wrought 
 
 And against thee, O Nature, be it brought 
 
 Upon my life, and let my memory abide it ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Last Prayer. 
 
 Quickly my little life will have departed. 
 To whom then should I pray, if at the last I could, 
 
 87
 
 "Thoughts Lying upon my pillow, heavy-hearted 
 
 Ifl For the much ill I'd done and little good? 
 
 Loneliness' 
 
 Shall hopeless prayers be hushed in their up-spring- 
 ing? 
 Shall I in dumb despair upon my death-bed lie? 
 Or to deaf Nature's might shall I be flinging 
 A cry that fades away without reply? 
 
 No, but I will pray, lest my spirit harden. 
 
 Silent but heart-warm prayers to those of my own 
 
 clay. 
 That they forgive my sins as theirs I pardon. 
 Unto my living fellow-men I'll pray.
 
 F%p,M ''TOe<J^S''
 
 FROM "THE FOREST OF TIVEDEN." 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Hark how the fir-trees in dismal tones, 
 Like the minor discords of drum and horn, 
 Sing a weird lament, all squeaks and groans, 
 That trolls have composed in this land forlorn! 
 
 And here, while gnat-swarms pipe and dance, 
 
 Past ages arise as in a trance. 
 
 These great ferns grew in an earlier aeon ; 
 
 Those moss-grown rocks with impending mass 
 
 Are piled in a rampart Cyclopean ; 
 
 Each rotten log in the wild morass 
 
 Is a deep-sea monster that here sticks out 
 
 At the edge of the water his dripping snout. 
 
 With its reptile-like scales, yonder pine-tree's root 
 So deep in the mud seems a saurian's foot; 
 And others, like spiders, are poised unsteady 
 On the edge of the cliffs where the step grows giddy. 
 
 But silence ! A shaggy head is shaking 
 
 The net-work of twigs, the dry stumps breaking 
 
 And laying them low on the heather dense. 
 
 'Tis the elk. As mighty and immense 
 
 As a mastodon, he now is slaking 
 
 His thirst in the swamp. He looks about. 
 
 Wild-eyed, at the mountains that shut him in, 
 
 91 
 
 ''The Forest 
 of Tiveden"
 
 "The Forest While silvery threads are trickling out 
 of Tiveden^' O^ his panting muzzle and bearded chin. 
 
 The haughty pine, as if in fear 
 
 Of the light, creeps close to the gravel here. 
 
 See the mountains! they rise not in splendid shapes 
 
 Of eternal snow, but are squat and gray; 
 
 They stand like beggars in thread-bare capes 
 
 That are dingy now since many a day. 
 
 And had we the murkiest words at hand 
 
 They were not dark or gloomy enow 
 
 To paint in verse that primeval land 
 
 Which is ever preaching: "Renounce, forsake!" 
 
 The peasant bites at his black rye cake, 
 
 And loose stones rattle beneath his plough. 
 
 How gray, how clad in joylessness 
 
 Are all of the scenes that meet me ! 
 
 My native soil, in the ragged dress 
 
 Of poverty you greet me. 
 
 92
 
 HOME. Homi 
 
 I'm longing for the forest: 
 The pathway in the grasses, 
 The house that on the ness is. 
 What orchards hold such apples 
 Deep-hid from eager spying? 
 What grain, when zephyr dapples. 
 Can breathe so soft a sighing? 
 Where can I better slumber 
 When bells the night-hours number? 
 
 Where do my memories tarry? 
 Where are my dead still living? 
 Where do I live undaunted. 
 Though years with sordid fingers 
 My fate are grayly weaving? 
 I like a shade have haunted 
 The place where memory lingers. 
 Oh, seek not near to hover. 
 Although the doors are fastened 
 And matted strewings cover 
 The steps, where winds have hastened 
 And dropped the leaves that wither. 
 Bring new-voiced laughter hither. 
 Let new floods from these places 
 Bear me, their banks o'erswelling. 
 Unto the silent races. 
 I sit within here lonely, 
 
 93
 
 Home Myself a memory only, — 
 This is my kingly dwelling. 
 
 Oh, say not that our elders. 
 
 Whose eyes are closed forever, 
 
 That those we fain would banish 
 
 And from our lives would sever, — 
 
 Say not their colors vanish 
 
 Like flowers and like grasses, 
 
 That we from hearts efface them 
 
 Like dust, when one would clear it 
 
 From ancient window-glasses. 
 
 In power they upraise them, 
 
 A host they of the spirit. 
 
 The whole wide earth enshrouding, 
 
 Our thoughts too overclouding, 
 
 Whate'er our fate or fortune. 
 
 Our thoughts, like swallows crowding, 
 
 Fly home at evening duly. 
 
 A home ! how firm its base is 
 
 By walls securely shielded, — 
 
 Our world — the one thing truly 
 
 We in this world have builded. 
 
 94
 
 CHILDHOOD FRIENDS. Childhood 
 
 Friends 
 
 One evening the Hall folk during a storm 
 
 Took a pack of old pictures as cards and played 
 
 Round a plate on which toffy and apples were laid. 
 
 The stoves with shut damper were glowing warm, 
 
 In eddying flakes the snow was flurried 
 
 Against the panes, that were coated with frost, 
 
 No jingle told that friends or the post 
 
 Through the deepening drifts of the roadway 
 
 hurried. 
 Three ancient sisters were heirs of the place, 
 Who now, as in their grandmother's days, 
 Shuffled the pack in the lamplight's glow 
 And dealt out the people they used to know. 
 With every picture they got for their hands 
 They would softly twitch at their shawls a while, 
 Would speak of old times and simper and smile. 
 And shake their bonnets with ribbon bands. 
 A Lieutenant von Platen they used as a jack, 
 A homely Miss Dubb was "old maid" of the pack. 
 
 The cards of the eldest would slip unduly. 
 She heard her sisters conversing coolly 
 Of bygone days — and night came on, 
 But she sat with them silent, as if alone. 
 The poodle slunk with an anxious whine 
 From her lap, then snifFed and with fixed stare 
 Looked up at the vacant easy-chair. 
 Which, they say, with a beast is a certain sign 
 
 95
 
 Childhood It sees a dead man in his wonted place, 
 Friends Where by night as by day is but empty space. 
 
 She was sunk in thought. — With a far-off gaze, 
 As one who hears an old song to a zither, 
 She recalled a friend of her childhood days, 
 Who had left her. They played as two larks that 
 
 twitter. 
 She was older a year but as wild as he. 
 They leapt into brooks amid splashing water, 
 And hand in hand they would wander free 
 On the darkening heath. She saw that he thought 
 
 her 
 Too old, wishing: "Were you but small and were 
 
 you 
 Afraid when we hark to the fir-trees sighing, 
 So that I over gate and stile must bear you 
 And through the bushes where snakes are lying! 
 You were born ten summers too soon for me." — 
 So he thought as he walked by her moodily. 
 Then quickly as hands of masons, plying. 
 The vaults and spires of a palace might rear. 
 They built up their lives with day and year. 
 When he had reached spring, her summer was near. 
 She sprinkled beans in the porridge-vessel 
 And pounded cinnamon with her pestle 
 And set it out on the family board. 
 While he thought: "How soon the rose-tree is laden 
 With bloom! You should still be a little maiden 
 96
 
 Who'd hark on my knee to my every word Childhood 
 
 Of the wide, strange world my vision had stored Friends 
 
 From tales that in painter's ink were set." — 
 
 Then down on their hearts there snowed regret, 
 
 For she understood and suffered no less. 
 
 They went to the lake and in deep distress 
 
 Sat down with hand to forehead and wept; 
 
 But they changed the rings from their fingers then, 
 
 For well did they know that never again 
 
 Could they give to another the rings they kept. 
 
 He went on his way, his spurs he earned 
 
 In distant countries where battle burned. 
 
 When, blackened with smoke, his horse in a lather, 
 
 He led on his men, he was gay and erect. 
 
 But when in the noisy night they would gather 
 
 Around the camp-fire, forest-decked. 
 
 Each one by a girl with a flask at his lips. 
 
 Though their coats were bloody and shot into strips; 
 
 In silent gloom apart from the crew 
 
 He sat, until, as if roused anew 
 
 By a bell, he recklessly sprang from the grass; 
 
 Then, wilder than all, to his mouth he drew 
 
 Each Circe or cluster of grapes he would pass. 
 
 The minutes in Time's great hour-glass 
 
 More quickly slipped. His cheek was aflame, 
 
 More young with every year he became, 
 
 A rebel, who at seventy still 
 
 Might wait the first wound of his foeman's skill 
 
 Which furrows the outer bastion's frame. 
 
 97
 
 Childhood He moved in a tumult of glad alarm, 
 Friends B"t his heart was asleep on his one love's arm. 
 One night, vv^hen the rain w^as pouring down, 
 All scratched and heated, he clambered out 
 Of a countess's window, and gazed about 
 And thought as he looked at the town: 
 
 "When a daughter lies to her mother, we say 
 
 Love's vaunted sun approaches the prime. 
 
 When she lies to him she has sworn to obey, 
 
 Her heart feels love for the second time. 
 
 Like a sneaking thief with skeleton keys 
 
 Love breaks through all vows and promises. 
 
 There is not in love one man of honor. 
 
 Would you see the worst scoundrels that ever drank 
 
 At breast, then behold them rank on rank. 
 
 When the whispering couples beneath Love's banner 
 
 Go by, each pair with fetters that clank. 
 
 As in long parade through the streets they walk 
 
 With insult and He and slanderous talk ; 
 
 For merely to watch how lovers gloat 
 
 Enkindles in others the mean and the low. 
 
 The sage, whether clad in toga or coat. 
 
 Closes his window and laughs at the show. 
 
 Next to the waiter and the woman's physician 
 
 The lover's the man that merits derision. 
 
 Wise married man, let your blood be chill, 
 
 And leave him to play his vaudeville, 
 
 For the horn he stealthily gives you to wear 
 
 Is less droll than the ass's ears be must bear 
 
 98
 
 Himself when he sips enchanted of Childhood 
 
 The cup where you sated your youth's glad ire. Friends 
 
 Where in all the befuddling joust of love 
 
 Are the noble raptures men sing to the lyre? 
 
 These lovers will start if you rap on the door 
 
 Like a school of fishes you scare with an oar. 
 
 Had love the worth of two rhymes in it, 
 
 Don Juan, who laughs as he leans on his blade, 
 
 Would not be the one man who boldly flayed 
 
 The avenger's back with his scourging wit. 
 
 Is thirst a fine thing because throats will thirst? 
 
 When the amorous poets, of liars the first, 
 
 Have set at the window the doll they admire, 
 
 With its rattle they lure the next passer-by, 
 
 For never doll danced before lover's eye 
 
 But it wakened a thrill of selfish desire. 
 
 Nay, to what likeness does love aspire? 
 
 It is but a little scampering rat. 
 
 That jumps in your way as you're going to bed, 
 
 And flies behind plank and door at your tread. 
 
 And because it slinks off in such mortal dread 
 
 'Tis a mark for the stone of each beggar brat. 
 
 Think not that Love hides a dream that is fraught 
 
 With cradles or any such worthy thought; 
 
 He's a tippler who in his secret lair 
 
 Pulls his cap down and whispers: "There's steps on 
 
 the stair — 
 Don't pause but toss off the glass without heed." 
 The animal-lover, who cuts the cork 
 And hook from the fishing-rod, who will feed 
 
 99
 
 Childhood His sweetheart's tiny linnet with seed, 
 Friends Will none the less look askance at the stork. 
 When love goes to sleep, our souls first move 
 To strains of deep feeling that will not pass. 
 Is a mother not more than a toying lass? 
 But the child she holds is the corpse of love. 
 On the mount of the gods, where in vain their liege is 
 Opposing to time his broken aegis, 
 With gray-haired Bacchus near by, we see 
 In never-changing stupidity 
 Fat Venus, who sits like a country girl 
 As she fastens a ribbon around a curl. 
 I furthermore count as a grievous fault 
 That blondest of hair which she thus attires. 
 She never glows, she only perspires ; 
 For blondes are as bread that is baked without salt, 
 And their table-talk is inept and stale. 
 Then black hair, too, conceals without fail 
 A faithless lust for daggers and death ; 
 And no dream could portray under bridal wreath 
 The hair that God gave the horse for his tail. 
 But soft chestnut-brown, where the sun-beams 
 
 dapple. 
 Whose tints with the tones of Correggio strive. 
 To such, O Iduna, I give thine apple, 
 That 's the hair to bewitch any man alive. 
 In brief, on dazzling shoulders hangs 
 The blondest hair ever curled in bangs. 
 Or twined with gold and sent for a drive. 
 She pats on the cheek the first groom she meets 
 100
 
 And goes with his smell to the emperor's sheets. Childhood 
 Don't try her with thoughts, for she'll puff them Friends 
 
 away ; 
 Take your gloves off and smack her buttocks in play, 
 Then wink and step on her toes a bit, 
 That's the wooing that suits Lady Venus's wit. 
 But if evil thoughts in her mind shall flow, 
 She'll poison the dart on Cupid's bow. 
 It is only to children, who sportively bear 
 Her apples and doves while they dream of her blisses, 
 That the smirking deceiver appears as fair 
 With thirst-cooling clusters of baneful kisses. 
 Yet there 's no stout oak of kingliest frame 
 But the whistling hail will shatter its crest; 
 The hurt man will dig his nails in his breast, 
 And curse, as I do, her might and her name. 
 He alone on earth wins a great career 
 Who, lost in thought, has passed by the dame. 
 How pallid her failing lamp will appear, 
 When the love your own effort has brought to birth 
 Flings arms of flame around heaven and earth !" 
 
 So he spoke, while with dripping hat 
 
 Over swimming highway and field he strode. 
 
 At length on the grass in his tent he sat. 
 
 Determined to fly by whatever road 
 
 His horse should choose, on that very night. 
 
 But the deepest wood and the swiftest river 
 
 Afford not oblivion's refuge ever 
 
 For the self-doomed man who has taken to flight. 
 
 101
 
 Childhood When he jumped down one evening with clattering 
 
 Friends sword 
 
 To the doorstep of home from the robes of his sledge, 
 
 He saw by the lantern's light that poured 
 
 On her as she stood bj' the privet hedge 
 
 Amid full-grown sisters, that on her face 
 
 The claws of time had been digging their trace. 
 
 He looked and he looked, as sad and still 
 
 As is a cloudless October morn, 
 
 When you note how on floor and window-sill 
 
 The lilac-tree shadow is faint and forlorn, 
 
 A thin net of cords and knots, though bright 
 
 The sun on the pane is shedding his light. 
 
 He clasped her as hard as in time of wreck 
 
 Two drunkards in terror embrace on the deck, 
 
 For she was still the one love of his heart. 
 
 As, when children, they turned with a frightened 
 
 start 
 On the bridge by the cliff and listened long 
 To the water's subterranean surge. 
 They heard now afar the threatening song 
 Of coming fate's inescapable urge. 
 
 The holy wedding-day soon approached, 
 
 When spiggots v/ere hammered and casks were 
 
 broached. 
 The hop-wine into the pitchers had raced, 
 The birches along the corridor placed 
 102
 
 Like a guard of honor were stiffly standing. Childhood 
 
 Fat fowls under the axe had bled. Friends 
 
 Each floor was leaf-strewn, and rose-leaves were 
 
 spread 
 By the sisters from sieves on each stair and landing. 
 For the drive to church the waggon was wound 
 With veils that had ever been saved by all 
 The maidens whose heads had been myrtle-crowned 
 This fifty years past up at the Hall. 
 But alone in her room through all the worry 
 She left her sisters to toil and hurry. 
 Each hour's time held a life's distress. 
 On her lap lay her sable wedding-dress, 
 For a garment of white beseems but the young. 
 At the heaven of fate with clouds overhung 
 She stared, while a storm in her bosom held sway; 
 She saw there but gloom that never was lighted. 
 In her grief she sat, like an autumn day 
 Where flowers are left, but all of them blighted. 
 Yet when eager across the threshold he stepped. 
 She quietly took his hands in her own 
 And told him of all that, silent, alone. 
 Through years of pain she had secretly wept. 
 Then a chilly glint fell on everything. 
 And across the black dress that lay on her knee 
 She tremblingly gave him back the ring. 
 While she spoke so low that near by on a tree 
 A sparrow tranquilly plumed her wing: 
 
 103
 
 Childhood "My love is my life, my all upon earth, 
 Friends And yours but the warmth of the home-cheering 
 hearth, 
 Where you'll shiver soon at the weaning blaze. 
 I should have stayed on in my springtime days. 
 We must not be bound by riveted links 
 Till each hates the other, and moans and shrinks. 
 I beg you forget me. I close my breast 
 And only long for the sleep of the grave. 
 But I know that my spirit is still possessed 
 Of a chain that holds you at my behest 
 With the memory-links that our springtime gave, 
 Which are set with jewels of deeper glow 
 Than love with its gleam as from hell below. 
 Whenever you seek to give to another 
 . The ring that now from my hand is warm. 
 You will stand there pale, your eyes you will cover, 
 Then stunned and waking you'll check your arm. 
 Between two eternities we have met — 
 And we part — That you're gone I may think sin- 
 cerely ; 
 But it's only an error, illusion merely. 
 The brooding man holds his compasses yet 
 On the circle in which his thoughts are bound 
 And like wolves go anxiously round and round; 
 Great men of the day, a contented set. 
 In street-corner conference go and come; 
 New friends at his heart are knocking there 
 And guests tramp up the snow-covered stair 
 To be welcomed by him on the porch of his home — 
 104
 
 They are all but as painted figures that roam Childhood 
 
 Over ceiling and wall through a great hall's space, Friends 
 
 Where we two as ever stand face to face. 
 
 My fate with your fate is interwrought, 
 
 And thousands must fight the fight we have fought, 
 
 Where love attains more than love can give. 
 
 The one whom you love as long as you live, 
 
 The one who has gained your every thought, 
 
 Is old and faded ; you never can 
 
 Give her the love that love seeks to own. 
 
 You shall wander about as a homeless man, 
 
 Shall reap but thistles where flowers you've sown. 
 
 But ever your longing heart shall grieve 
 
 In its wish to love her and her alone, 
 
 As birds might love when their glad wings cleave 
 
 The air all aglow with the summer's fire, 
 
 And your heart shall be wasted with vain desire." 
 
 It was thus that she spoke the day he went. 
 And she fell in a faint as his wheels rolled away. 
 Now rising, above the side-board she leant 
 Where the Christmas tarts and cookies lay. 
 
 That evening she dealt them every one 
 
 To the manor servants, who when it was done 
 
 Were filled with surprise by the kitchen board 
 
 At the prodigal food and candle-light. 
 
 Her sisters alone caught the whispered word : 
 
 "My dearest memory makes its flight 
 
 Through the storm to guest in our house to-night, 
 
 105
 
 Childhood It has come over dusky waters and lands 
 Friends ^^^ has laid on my hair two blessing hands." 
 
 The Hall soon slept, the panes no more shone, 
 But, deep in a problem that baffles all skill, 
 Awake in the arm-chair, hushed and still, 
 A little parched woman was sitting alone. 
 
 106
 
 SINGERS IN THE STEEPLE. Singers 
 
 At the belfry window the ringer stood, 
 A vigorous form of giant size. 
 His thatch of red hair, unkempt and rude, 
 Was blown down over his eyes. 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 He tramped at the treadle and sang his song: 
 
 "Thou mighty thundering church-bell, thou. 
 With lips and tongue of metal that ring, 
 Thou callest the people to worship now, 
 But this my own psalm I prefer to sing. 
 The weary week-days back to Monday 
 Are slaves to the rich man, the money-lord. 
 The only day that steals from his hoard 
 A paltry copper is Sunday. 
 His life is a heaven. Ours instead 
 Is a hell. We are ragged and eat hard bread. 
 At home our loved ones are sighing. 
 While starved we row for a surfeited race 
 Their barge of trade with sweat in our face 
 And weep at the oars we are plying." 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 "May vengeance dire consume them! 
 When shall I ring in redress of wrong. 
 And God's own judgment doom them? 
 
 "From our starving flesh they cut off a pound 
 To make the money-lord fat and round. 
 
 107
 
 Singers But beware, money-lord, your knell will be rung! 
 Oppression is old but freedom is young. 
 She comes as a thief in the night. 
 She waits not to knock, but in she breaks 
 She tramples your carpets and hers she makes 
 Whatever you snatched with your might. 
 
 "There 's a mine of powder by no means small 
 In the cellars under your castle wall. 
 A spark, and the mob will rally." 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 "We bring an armful of stones along, 
 
 With torches we sally 
 
 From hovel and alley. 
 
 We shame your wife, we stick your swine, 
 
 We spill on the street your costliest wine. 
 
 Your roan must pull where we have striven. 
 
 And when to ashes your castle is burned, 
 
 Our hell will be turned 
 
 At once into your proud heaven. 
 
 "From our huts to the square we all drag out 
 
 Our straw and our tatters clout by clout. 
 
 On them shall your throne be, O money-king. 
 
 And your plundered purse for your apple we'll bring. 
 
 And drummers shall come and stand around 
 
 To thunder and pound 
 
 On your kitchen saucepans furiously, 
 
 And fifers shall toot in time with them 
 
 On crystal decanters your requiem. 
 
 108
 
 Above, your house totters, while sparks begem Singers 
 Your smoke-woven canopy. 
 Your dirge to the skies will groan now. 
 And beggars will bring live coals to fire 
 The straw-heap that is your throne now. 
 They dance in a ring around your pyre, 
 While I sing bass in the men's deep song. 
 And I ring in so loudly your final hour 
 That earth re-echoes my strokes of power." 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 Up on the tower beams beside him sat 
 His wife in silence. Then she followed him 
 Down the steep ladder's length, she followed on 
 In silent thought down churchyard pathways trim. 
 Beside their cottage lay a narrow plot 
 Of garden by a hill, all baked and dry. 
 Thither she went alone, but in her ears 
 Still rang the deep bell and her husband's cry. 
 He, harsh and wild, slunk off as was his wont 
 To drink and gamble at a neighbor's house. 
 She sat her down among the stones beneath 
 The mingled maple and wild cherry boughs. 
 To save her Sunday shoes she loosened them 
 And slowly took them off. With playful air 
 She wove for fun a chain of maple leaves 
 And fastened on some cherries here and there. 
 Then she sprang up, hearing a man's voice nigh 
 And sound of more men coming, vaulted o'er 
 The latticed garden gate with nimble bound, 
 
 109
 
 Singers And ran until she reached the steeple door. 
 
 There she stepped in, afraid she might be caught 
 Running bare-footed on a Sabbath day. 
 In the dark steeple, under the round bell. 
 She, young and sunburnt, held her leaf array. 
 
 She listened long; at last, when no one came. 
 Quickly around her neck the wreath she threw 
 And climbed the steep rungs higher, higher yet, 
 Until the floor had vanished from her view. 
 
 Dull in the wood-work whined the eddying draught. 
 With bended foot and practiced hand she stood 
 Upon the rungs as upon tight-stretched cords 
 And held on steadfastly with resolute mood. 
 Through loop-holes she could see the market-place, 
 But all was dark beneath her in the tower. 
 At every step the bell became more large, 
 And men grew smaller on the street below her. 
 Breathless and flushed and warm she reached the 
 
 bell ; 
 Like to a loved and trusted friend she found it, 
 And when she smote her knuckles on its rim, 
 Whispered vibrations fluttered all around it. 
 But higher still the narrow steps led on. 
 Boldly at last with lifted hands she swung 
 Up to the narrow beam. The bell below, 
 Dumbly upon its bright-worn axis hung. 
 One arm across the beam, she twined her chain 
 Of maple leaves around the brazen crest, 
 110
 
 So that the green-gray giant suddenly Singers 
 
 Was as a maiden for her bridal dressed. 
 
 The service done, the ringer came, but paused 
 
 In dumb surprise, his arm against a beam, 
 
 To note the verdant head-dress of the bell 
 
 With reddish-purple cherries all agleam. 
 
 His wife had often rung the bell before; 
 
 She waited not his grumble or his frown 
 
 But on the well-worn treadle of the bell 
 
 She set her foot, strong-sinewed, bare and brown. 
 
 The bell swayed heavily from side to side, 
 
 Now the first deafening strokes were heard to ring. 
 
 With that the frightened jackdaws raised a cry, 
 
 And tower, roof and beams began to swing. 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 She tramped at the treadle and sang her song: 
 
 "From the tower's quivering height 
 
 Ring forth over square and street! 
 
 Afar lies the plain with its waving wheat 
 
 And the woods where the sun glows bright. 
 
 Not only over the fields and bays. 
 
 Where, O bell, thy notes are hurled. 
 
 But over the weeks and years I gaze 
 
 To the brothering-time of the world. 
 
 I see not savage and weaponed men, 
 
 Not kindled cities aflame — 
 
 Such a world would be but again 
 
 The old world, the ill world, the same. 
 
 Ill
 
 Singers "Nay, the city is festive. Bells are clanging. 
 At every doorway garlands are seen. 
 Between the houses festoons are hanging, 
 The street is all like an arbor of green. 
 A forest of flags on the house-tops is swaying 
 And streamers by thousands and thousands are play- 
 ing. 
 The mightiest pennon gleams and arches 
 From the golden vane of the steeple. 
 Like brothers below pass the people, 
 For rich man with poor man marches. 
 They meet not for strife but for shaking of hands, 
 As now are gathered the reaper bands 
 For the haying-feast at midsummer time. 
 Then my daughter's daughter shall climb 
 To the bell where the rafters sway, 
 And, brown of hue and young and strong 
 As I, shall ring in the brothering-day." 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 "Then, drawn by white horses with plumes of white 
 
 At a walk, a carriage comes in sight, 
 
 A carriage with silvered wagon-prong." 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 "Around it are children in white arrayed. 
 
 The rain of flowers has overlaid 
 
 So deeply the stones of the street below 
 
 That softly the wheels as on carpets go. 
 
 On the carriage, the goal of every eye 
 
 Stands a mighty cup exalted high, 
 
 112
 
 A bowl whereon wreaths of corn-flowers twine, Singers 
 And along the rim these letters shine: 
 Not joy to the rich, to the poor man care; 
 Our toil and our pleasure alike we share. 
 
 "The crowd makes way for the carriage to come, 
 
 The murmurs grow silent, the people stand dumb ; 
 
 Only the sound of the bells is rolled, 
 
 Like a seraph-song from the blue down-sailing. 
 
 Then the heads are bared, both young and old. 
 
 Then matrons and maidens look pale and cold 
 
 As they stand by their balcony railing. 
 
 Unsparing, each tears in pieces 
 
 The necklace that brother or husband gave, 
 
 Strips of? the rings that sparkle so brave, 
 
 And her arms from jewels releases. 
 
 They climb on the railings one and all 
 
 And into the mighty cup let fall 
 
 Their wealth, where the flowers blending 
 
 Hide with their petals the bad gold's gleam. 
 
 Like rain-drops in banded light descending, 
 
 From festive balconies falls the stream." 
 
 Ding! Dong! 
 
 "With sudden tears the most hardened of men 
 Swears to abide by his fellows then 
 In weal or woe his whole life long 
 As a son, a brother, one of their clay. 
 The tender woman in man shall bring 
 Redemption to all the world and ring 
 In the future's brothering-day." 
 
 113
 
 Cradle- THE CRADLE-SONGS OF GOLDILOCKS. 
 
 Songs of 
 
 Goldilocks 
 
 I. 
 
 Seek, little Goldilocks, to and fro. 
 
 Where should our thoughts be flying? 
 
 Dark is thy father's bed and low. 
 
 Grasses wave when the night-winds blow, 
 
 Softly above him sighing. 
 
 All of me that was dear to him, 
 
 Braided tresses heavy and dim 
 
 Over my jacket straying; 
 
 All that I loved in him the while. 
 
 Lofty brow and the mischievous smile 
 
 Over his curved lips playing; 
 
 All that in either could set a-dance 
 
 The other's pulses and voice and glance 
 
 Is in thy life united. 
 
 Oh my son, my beloved son, 
 
 Vainly the world with curse and stone 
 
 Lawless love would have blighted. 
 
 Lawless love, which even I 
 
 Wept for, has sprung into blossom now. 
 
 On toward the future it goes; it is thou, 
 
 'Tis a race that will never die. 
 
 XL 
 
 (Mumble, tumble, bumble-bee!) 
 In a spider-woven tent 
 Under shining raindrops bent, 
 114
 
 Beetle ladies form a ring Cradle- 
 
 Round Miss Ladybird, Songs of 
 
 And, when she says anything, Goldilocks 
 
 Smirk at every word, 
 Bow at what they've heard. 
 Grasses all the meadow through 
 Wear wee bells of heavenly blue. 
 And some hundred ants there, too. 
 Listen from behind the stalks. 
 Hark now when the lady talks! 
 
 (Mumble, tumble, bumble-bee!) 
 
 Watchman Glow-w^orm, bring me here 
 
 The largest bee that grazes near. 
 
 Lift the saddle down with speed, 
 
 Let your skilful hands 
 
 Deck with plumes the gallant steed 
 
 Fit for my commands. 
 
 Ride through all my lands. 
 
 Take as helm a silken gay 
 
 Chrysalis of silver-gray. 
 
 If you hear a cradle sway, 
 
 Step out on the sill of tin. 
 
 Raise your lamp and enter in. 
 
 (Mumble, tumble, bumble-bee!) 
 Where will be her infant bed. 
 Where the crib to lay her head ? — 
 Aye, the little one, the same 
 Goldilocks shall win, 
 
 115
 
 Cradle- 
 Songs of 
 Goldilocks 
 
 Who will share his life, his name. 
 When she's found, send in 
 Tidings with a din. 
 Blow your fairy horn with power, 
 Clarion in the morning hour. 
 Wake then, guardian of my bower, 
 Seize the blue-bell stalks and swing 
 Until every one shall ring. 
 
 III. 
 
 Sift the golden barley. 
 Many a grain is not of gold, 
 But the sieve that strains them 
 Always then retains them. 
 Soon we've half the sack will hold. 
 But to whom, now, grant it? 
 Grain is for the miller's box. 
 Nay, but I will plant it, 
 And my garden 's Goldilocks. 
 
 Sift the golden barley. 
 
 When the seed is springing, 
 
 Dream-sylphs in the moonlight fair, 
 
 To my garden winging, 
 
 Pray as at an altar there. 
 
 Soon the leaves are rifted 
 
 By a soldier's leveled spear, 
 
 Golden on his lifted 
 
 Finger starry gleams appear. 
 
 116
 
 Sift the golden barley. Cradle- 
 
 From his horse a lion's hide Songs of 
 
 Hangs. A thought jon star is. Goldilocks 
 
 And the soldier in his pride 
 
 Envoy from afar is. 
 
 Dream-sylphs, though, that hovered 
 
 Pluck the barb from out the breast 
 
 Which thin veils had covered 
 
 Vainly when the spear was pressed. 
 
 Sift the golden barley. 
 
 Stained with blood, the tender 
 
 Maidens bend the spear of thought. 
 
 Till upon their slender 
 
 Knees to rosy harps 'tis wrought. 
 
 Of the star-beams featly 
 
 Next they spin the strings, and aye 
 
 Through his lifetime sweetly 
 
 Unto Goldilocks will play. 
 
 IV. 
 
 May east or may west the great castle be spied 
 
 Where no one is watching or dwelling? 
 
 The grumbling rain in a foamy gray tide 
 
 From the rusty roof-spouts is welling. 
 
 Now, weather-cock, turn in the wind and hark 
 
 What the rain-spouts sing as the day grows dark. — 
 
 "Hoohoo!" comes his crow out-swelling. 
 
 117
 
 Cradle- A daughter of earth came merrily up 
 Songs of In a ship that with bricks was freighted. 
 Goldilocks She built then the walls from cellar to top, 
 While her tears with her smiles were mated. 
 A pink doll sat at the table and ate 
 With candies instead of eggs on her plate, 
 "That 's good!" said the doll, elated. 
 
 While the doll was eating, and myrtle was strewed 
 
 In the chamber, our queen was moving 
 
 To the open spinet with pensive mood, 
 
 Her wide eyes wondrous and loving. 
 
 On the lid by their flocks in the blossomy spring 
 
 Were shepherd and shepherdess reveling. 
 
 "I know," said the roof-stork, approving. 
 
 Deserted since then is each stair and room. 
 
 If doubtful she turns the key there. 
 
 Amid hats and cloaks she hunts in the gloom 
 
 For what memories still may be there. 
 
 The fairest she takes in her arms along 
 
 And weaves of the memories Goldilocks' song. 
 
 "That 's life!" cries the cock with glee there. 
 
 V. 
 
 On a ferny hill-crest lo! 
 Now the sun-ball pauses. 
 Goldilocks and mother go 
 118
 
 O'er the shining mosses. Cradle- 
 
 Goldilocks will bravely choose Songs of 
 
 On that ball to journey. Goldilocks 
 
 Well, put on 3'our wooden shoes 
 Or the sun will burn ye. 
 
 What 's the sun ? A ball of wool 
 
 Wound when threads unravel 
 
 From an overladen spool. 
 
 Now it starts to travel. 
 
 Feel the winds how strong they blow! 
 
 Nothing you can hold to. 
 
 I've the thread you're tied on, though; 
 
 Laugh, then, and be bold, too! 
 
 Off the ball bounds, far abroad 
 Golden sparks are shaken. — 
 Stubble snaps along the road 
 Where my steps are taken. 
 Whitened boughs like monstrous bones 
 Here the earth encumber. 
 Hark! it seemed from yonder stones 
 Something sighed in slumber. 
 
 Now a dog in brushwood dim 
 Sniffs and starts a-growling. — 
 Off in space beyond Earth's rim 
 You by this are rolling. 
 Where 's your laughter taken flight? 
 Does the darkness cover 
 
 119
 
 Cradle- 
 Songs of 
 Goldilocks 
 
 Now your eyes, with starry night 
 Under you and over? 
 
 Apsarases, nymphs of air, 
 
 In celestial dances, 
 
 Veiled in beams of moonlight, bear 
 
 Each a lamp that glances. 
 
 Wrought of fragrant cloud-stuff they, 
 
 When the gods were strewing 
 
 Star-dust of the Milky Way 
 
 For their nectar-brewing. 
 
 These go searching in a ring 
 
 Never far asunder. 
 
 And each lamp 's a world, a thing 
 
 Fit for highest wonder. 
 
 But your ball, with whizzing din 
 
 Downward, downward gliding, 
 
 Nears an isle behind a thin 
 
 Mist-spun trellis hiding. 
 
 Blue Elysium lies outspread 
 By the myrtle strand there. 
 You may roam among the dead, 
 Take them by the hand there. 
 Each one has the will to teach, 
 By his lore to guide you. 
 In your life thereafter each 
 Still will walk beside you. 
 120
 
 Old Diogenes stumbles out, 
 Bow-legged, brown and hairy, 
 From his tub with raucous shout: 
 "Butterfly, be wary! 
 You're all giddy and aglow; 
 Water 's in the sand, lad, 
 And the finest cup I know 
 Is the scooping hand, lad." 
 
 Saladin in iron coat 
 Waits you swart, each crimson 
 Ruby gleaming as a float 
 From the lake it swims on. 
 "Though my iron boots are meet 
 For no small foot's wearing. 
 Take and put them on your feet. 
 See! your shoes are charring." 
 
 Next you hear the Sibyl's croak. 
 
 All her mantle 's yellow 
 
 From the clouds of sulphur smoke : 
 
 "Soon you'll know, young fellow, — 
 
 When into my well your ball 
 
 Drops, with sulphur reeking, — 
 
 What the nymphs have sought, what all, 
 
 All of us are seeking." 
 
 From the well a voice oppressed 
 Cries: "With ardor many 
 Men gaze into their own breast. 
 
 Cradle- 
 Songs of 
 Goldilocks 
 
 121
 
 Cradle- Boy, we seek for any 
 
 Songs of Child who, man, shall lift the sun 
 Goldilocks From the mists' dark hollow. 
 Goldilocks, if you're the one, 
 Lead us, and we follow!" 
 
 Now the ball has gone its track 
 
 To the farthest tether, 
 
 In a minute I'll wind back 
 
 Sun and you together. 
 
 Naked, star-eyed, you alight. 
 
 Your hot steed forsaking. 
 
 Well, good-morning! Day is bright. 
 
 Goldilocks is waking. 
 
 122
 
 A MAN'S LAST WORD TO A WOMAN. A Man's 
 
 Love-dazed, on rosy paths I sought thee far; 
 That was the spring, my gay and stormy prime. 
 Then I encountered thee with smiles and war; 
 Those were the manhood years of summer-time. 
 I thank thee for the joy thy presence gave ; 
 That was in autumn, when the bed 's the grave. 
 
 123
 
 Hot with "HOW EASILY MEN'S CHEEKS ARE HOT 
 Wrath WITH WRATH!" 
 
 How easily men's cheeks are hot with wrath! 
 
 In haste, with little knowledge of the art, 
 
 The many judge the individual heart. 
 
 But every heart a secret chamber hath. 
 
 Thereto a door whose lock no key will turn. 
 
 What oil the lamps within that chamber burn 
 
 Is for each man his secret. But a stream 
 
 Of light goes through the key-hole, by whose gleam 
 
 We move about and wake, and fall asleep. 
 
 It leads us; to our journey's end we keep 
 
 Along the pathway pointed by its beam. 
 
 124
 
 "GRANT THAT WE DIE YOUNG." "Grant That 
 
 We Die 
 
 Give the full happiness our tongue Y „ 
 
 Would quaff, but only sips in stinted measure ; ^ 
 
 Pour us a brimming draught of pain, of pleasure, 
 And grant that we die young! 
 
 Man doth not ever find amid the grasses 
 A plant that wind and frost more quickly slay, 
 Nor doth he form a vessel out of clay 
 More brittle than himself — so soon he passes. 
 What though he build the structure stone by stone 
 Of all his knowledge, thought, and will, and yearn- 
 ing? 
 Ere on his grave the grass to green is turning 
 His crumbling temple unto dust is blown; 
 Like a dry branch the spire is overthrown. 
 
 'Tis day as yet, and joyful songs are sung 
 By temple maidens dancing on the mead. 
 When it is dark, then let us homeward speed; — 
 Oh, grant that we die young! 
 
 125
 
 Pilgrim's THE PILGRIM'S YULE SONG. 
 
 Yule Soiiq 
 
 ^ (From "Hans AHenus.") 
 
 Autumn rains and the desert sun 
 
 Bleached my pilgrim's attire. 
 
 Just at cock-crow my day was begun 
 
 Ere yet the dawn spread higher. 
 
 Slowly, drearily 
 
 I'd be trudging 
 
 Swedenward, and not until eve 
 
 Would I wearily 
 
 Seek for lodging — 
 
 Straw by the hearth is what they'd leave. 
 
 Tales of crusades and a credulous mood 
 
 Guided the thoughts that stirred me. 
 
 Drawn by my stories, the peasants stood 
 
 Hushed at the door and heard me. 
 
 Women, listening. 
 
 Crowded tightly 
 
 Each to each in a spell-bound row. 
 
 Sparks were glistening, 
 
 Spouted lightly 
 
 Up from the licking flames below. 
 
 Pilgrim adventures along the road, 
 Such would I tell unbidden. 
 Never the blighting flame I showed 
 Deep in my spirit hidden. 
 126
 
 'Tis not the dutiful Pilgrim's 
 
 Holy brother Yule Song 
 
 Goes concealed in the cloak I wear. 
 
 'Tis not the beautiful 
 
 Bright God's-mother 
 
 Who is the queen of my utmost prayer. 
 
 I have strayed about in the dread 
 
 Region of Phantoms lonely, 
 
 Long amid bones have talked with the dead, 
 
 Wraiths of the desert only, 
 
 Till by nearing them 
 
 Soon I proved them. 
 
 Sobs and laughter we came to share; 
 
 And from fearing them 
 
 Last I loved them, 
 
 Sought a home with the phantoms there. 
 
 Phantoms possessed me — in lovely sheen 
 
 Rose now a world long buried. 
 
 Nineveh maidens with wreaths of green 
 
 Decked the stafiE that I carried. 
 
 Stars had a shimmering 
 
 Bible clearness. 
 
 Faint-sighing music around me stole. 
 
 Till with a glimmering 
 
 Magic nearness 
 
 Old-time beauty entranced my soul. 
 
 Sewn on my cope, the mussel-shell 
 
 127
 
 Pilgrim's Roars with Ionian surges. 
 Yule Sona Echo of cymbal and drum as well 
 
 Into the tumult merges. 
 
 Centaurs with ponderous 
 
 Hoof-beats ringing 
 
 Carry off maidens and snort in pride. 
 
 Terrible, thunderous 
 
 Laughter and singing 
 
 Mark the time of their galloping stride: 
 
 Faithless, I fled the land of shades, 
 
 Longingly turned again to 
 
 Crowded and glittering promenades — 
 
 Nay, but that was in vain, too. 
 
 Life-wards wooing me, 
 
 Towns and lands would 
 
 Raise around me their loud delight ; 
 
 But, pursuing me. 
 
 Spectral hands would 
 
 Steal across and obscure my sight. 
 
 Freely the young around me greet 
 
 Ages that newly awaken. 
 
 I, like a wraith amid all I meet, 
 
 Move on the road I have taken. 
 
 Moderns, gallantly 
 
 Bending bows of 
 
 Sinew and steel, shoots words apace; 
 
 I go silently, 
 
 128
 
 No man knows of Pilgrim's 
 
 Him who strays from the phantom's place. Yule Song 
 
 Never can I with my old delight 
 
 Speak of the hour that passes; 
 
 Thoughts will be groping day and night 
 
 Down in the deep crevasses, 
 
 Where no flickering 
 
 Torch gives other 
 
 Light than a subterranean glare. 
 
 Gaily bickering 
 
 Friend and brother 
 
 Never with me the board will share. 
 
 Screaming cranes have already flown. 
 
 Snow-flakes are deftly laying 
 
 Bolster and pillow on ledge and stone, 
 
 Windows, the huts betraying. 
 
 Shine forth clouded. A 
 
 Sparrow is winging 
 
 Toward the barn with its sheaves of wheat. 
 
 Evening-shrouded, a 
 
 Boy is singing 
 
 Yule-tide songs from his waggon-seat. 
 
 Voices of childhood years, toward you 
 Now through the snow I stumble; 
 But to my heart you have lost the clue 
 And in my ears but mumble. 
 Oh, ye cumberless, 
 
 129
 
 Pilgrim's Mild, Elysian 
 
 Yule Song Voices, in vain would you soothe my soul. 
 
 Threatful, with numberless 
 
 Repetition, 
 
 Scenes of Hades before me roll. 
 
 Lethe's tide makes the soul forget; 
 
 I, blind and headlong-hearted, 
 
 Drank of dark Styx — and my gaze was set 
 
 Only on times departed. 
 
 Pale ghosts, grieving me, 
 
 Lure me ever 
 
 Only to dream by Charon's flood. 
 
 Gay Life, deceiving me. 
 
 Grants me never 
 
 Fruits that, beckoning, thrill my blood. 
 
 Fettered to life, I roam the earth. 
 
 Driven without cessation, 
 
 Seeking, but finding only dearth, 
 
 Stranger in every nation. 
 
 Hades recaptured me. 
 
 Life has punished 
 
 All of the wraith-kind who came her way. 
 
 Beauty enraptured me. 
 
 Realms long vanished 
 
 Won my soul to be theirs for aye. 
 
 130
 
 THE SLUMBERING SISTER. Slumbering 
 
 Sister 
 Though through the door the morning sun glows 
 
 red, 
 
 Yet she, our cherished one, whom all night long 
 
 We lulled to sleep with flute-notes and with song 
 
 Has not awakened. Is she dead? 
 
 Stifled by incense fumes, behold ! 
 She lies here, — incense that our love of old 
 Burnt to her as around some holy grave. 
 Without avail we sought to deck her form 
 In the fair robe her sister's limbs made warm ; 
 Cold, it slips down, the garment that we gave, 
 
 And leaves exposed her lifeless frame. 
 
 She's dead, lo! Sweden was her name. 
 
 'Tis in a house of mourning that we guest, 
 And funeral ale 's the drink with which we feast. 
 Deafly she slumbers, chin upon her breast. 
 The while her sister, Norway, in the west 
 Rises at daybreak. Hear her song ascending! 
 She hails the new day till we all have wondered 
 At her brave words. From hundred mouths to hun- 
 dred 
 Through distant regions they re-echo still. 
 
 But she whom lue love sleeps here chill. 
 
 Let us depart and no more waste our youth 
 In empty funeral speech and threnody. 
 
 131
 
 Slumbering Come, break your flutes to pieces on your knee. 
 
 Sister Who would play music to the dead, forsooth ! 
 
 We do not lean a hot and feverish head 
 Upon a breast that death makes hard and chill. 
 No, in life's turmoil we'd forget the dead 
 For whom of old our hearts with love could thrill. 
 We seek our living at the stranger's gate. 
 Men ask: "What has your home-land done of late? 
 Is not her fame the goal of your ambition. 
 Her strife, her toil, in small things as in great?" 
 Our silence tells our sharp contrition. 
 
 How empty year succeeds on empty year, 
 How comfort palls, wherever we may roam. 
 If our life passes far away from home! 
 But of our flutes we build for her a bier 
 And lift her up from where, supine, she lay, 
 Whispering softly meanwhile at her ear 
 That in the world already dawn shows clear. 
 Her borrowed garments then we cast away. 
 Remorsefully we tramp out with our tread 
 The incense, bearing her with songs instead 
 
 Out of the stuffy alcove deep 
 Unto the threshold where the dawn wind blows. 
 And the first light tinges her cheek with rose. 
 
 She is not dead; she does but sleep. 
 
 132
 
 FliOzM ''D^W VOe^MS''
 
 A PEOPLE. A People 
 
 I. 
 
 The People. 
 
 (Cf. Nahum III, 18.) 
 
 The prophet Nahum speaketh thus 
 To Nineveh, to Assyria's king: 
 "The pilots of thy people slumber. 
 And each one of thy chieftains, Prince, 
 Dwelleth apart and doeth naught; 
 Thy scattered people roam the mountains, 
 For no voice ever summoneth them." 
 
 I tremble at the word : a people ! 
 
 So full of song, so full of wailing, 
 
 Of thunderbolts and trump o' doom. 
 
 I shrink together at the word 
 
 As at a heaven-towering giant. 
 
 Whose foot is crunching in my ribs 
 
 As I might crunch a mussel-shell. 
 
 A people! Toward the sky it flames. 
 
 In a dark valley waggons rattle. 
 
 And savage men in wild-beast skins. 
 
 With naked children, wasted women. 
 
 Plod ever forward, ever forward. 
 
 Forgetful of the roads they followed 
 
 And no more knowing whence they came. 
 
 The children ask, but no one answers. 
 
 135
 
 A People There rises from the throng of elders, 
 
 With ice-gray beard and shaggy mantle, 
 
 One-eyed, a raven on his shoulder, 
 
 And sword unsheathed, a wonder-man. 
 
 He motions to the bards — and sadly 
 
 They sing of their forgotten birthplace, 
 
 When midnight stareth on the tents. 
 
 He speaks — around the altar-stone 
 
 That, blood-smeared, stands beneath the oak-tree 
 
 He sets new images of gods 
 
 And stands himself as god among them. 
 
 Then groweth leaf-o'ershadowed Birka,* 
 
 Where amid oar-song viking vessels 
 
 Cut glad the waves. On yon high prow 
 
 Stands the dread fifty-winter sea-king 
 
 With captured bride and hails his home. 
 
 Soon speech as soft as festal raiment 
 
 Is woven, timed to gentler breathing. 
 
 Then holy bells ring, centuries hurry 
 
 Like shadow of clouds across the lands. 
 
 Now all grows still, as mournful-still 
 
 As when a limpid St. John's Eve 
 
 Sets heavenly glint on sound and bay; 
 
 But in the heart's deep secrecy 
 
 Dwells dread, when anxious lips are silent. 
 
 My people, though your hand be cold, 
 
 * Birka, or Birch Island, was a port of the Vikings near to where 
 Stockholm now stands. 
 
 136
 
 The frost that chills is of the dawn. A People 
 
 Your pilots slumber, O my people, 
 And each one of your chieftains, too, 
 Dwelleth apart and doeth naught. 
 
 II. ^ 
 Sweden. 
 
 Oh Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, native land, 
 The home and haven of our longing! 
 The cow-bells ring where armies used to stand, 
 Whose deeds are story, but with hand in hand 
 To swear the ancient troth again thy sons are throng- 
 ing. 
 
 Fall, winter snow! And sigh, thou wood's deep 
 
 breast ! 
 Burn, all ye stars, from summer heavens peeping! 
 Sweden, mother, be our strife, our rest, 
 Thou land wherein our sons shall build their nest. 
 Beneath whose church-yard stones our noble sires 
 
 are sleeping. 
 
 III. 
 
 Fellow-Citizens. 
 
 As sure as we have a fatherland 
 We are heirs to it one with another. 
 By common right in an equal band, 
 The rich and his needy brother. 
 
 137
 
 A People Let each have his voice as we did of old 
 
 When a shield was the freeman's measure, 
 And not all be reckoned like sacks of gold 
 By a merchant counting his treasure. 
 
 We fought for our homes together when 
 
 Our coast by the foe was blighted. 
 
 It was not alone the gentlemen 
 
 Drew sword when the beacons were lighted. 
 
 Not only the gentlemen sank to earth 
 
 But also the faithful yoemen; 
 
 'Tis a blot on our flag that we reckon worth 
 
 By wealth, and poor men are no men. 
 
 'Tis a shame to do as we oft have done, — 
 
 Give strangers the highest places, 
 
 But beat our own doors with many a stone 
 
 And publish our own disgraces. 
 
 We are weary of bleeding by our own knife, 
 
 When the heart from the head we sever; 
 
 We would be as one folk with a single life, 
 
 Which we are and would be forever. 
 
 ^^^ V. 
 
 Soldiers' Song. 
 
 Beat the drums there, boys ! Go ahead, make way ! 
 
 Hurrah for country and king! 
 
 Hurrah for the Riksdag, where old men stay. 
 
 Pound the gavel and scratch at their heads all day, 
 
 138
 
 And cough and blink at the ceiling so gray A People 
 
 Ere they let the gold-pieces ring! 
 
 But when it's time that for people and king 
 Our blood on the snow shall run, 
 They don't tie a man with a money-bag string, 
 For then, young or old, the man 's the thing. 
 All right, then, comrades. Strike up and sing! 
 We'll be as one people, as one. 
 
 We'll be as an eagle, faithful and dumb 
 
 Mid petty clamor and clangor. 
 
 When the thunder rolls at the beat of the drum. 
 
 Then between the gray crags our banner shall come. 
 
 We'll be heard when we swoop from our rocky 
 
 home 
 And yell with the might of anger. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Invocation and Promise. 
 
 If the neighbor-lands three should cry: "Forget 
 Your greatness of bygone ages!" 
 I'd answer: "Arise, O North, who yet 
 May'st be what my dream presages!" 
 The vision of greatness may bring again 
 New deeds like those of our betters. 
 Come, open the graves — nay, give us men 
 For Science and Art and Letters! 
 
 139
 
 A People Aye, close to a cliff let our people stand 
 Where a fool his poor neck may shatter. 
 There are other things, men, to hold in your hand 
 Than a brim-full Egyptian platter. 
 It were better the plate should be split in two 
 Than that hearts should rot when still living. 
 That no race may be more great than you, — 
 That 's the goal, why count we the striving? 
 
 It were better to feel the avenger's might 
 Than that years unto naught should have hasted, 
 It were better our people should perish quite 
 And our fields and cities be wasted. 
 It is braver to take the dice's hap 
 Than to mope till our fire is expended ; 
 It is finer to hear the bow-string snap 
 Than never the bow to have bended. 
 
 I wake in the night, but I hear no sound 
 
 Save the waters seething and churning. 
 
 Like a soldier of Judah, prone on the ground, 
 
 I could pray with passionate yearning. 
 
 I ask not years when the sun shines bright, 
 
 Nor for golden crops I importune. 
 
 Kind Fate, let the blazing thunderbolt smite 
 
 My people with years of misfortune ! 
 
 Yea, smite us and lash us but into one, 
 
 And the bluest of springs will follow. 
 
 Ye smile, my folk, but with face as of stone, 
 
 140
 
 Ye sing, but your joy is hollow. A People 
 
 Ye rather would dance in silk, forsooth. 
 
 Than solve your own riddle truly, 
 
 Ye might awake to the deeds of your youth 
 
 In the night when ye sorrow newly. 
 
 Then on, shy daughter, in hardship bred. 
 
 Look up and let sloth forsake thee! 
 
 We love thee so that, if thou wert dead, 
 
 Our love could once more awake thee. 
 
 Though the bed be hard, though the midnight lowers, 
 
 We'll be true while the tempest rages. 
 
 Thou people, thou land, thou speech that is ours, 
 
 Thou voice of our souls to the ages ! 
 
 141
 
 A Day A DAY. 
 
 With twinkling stars the sky is crowned, 
 Although the peasant with his light 
 Is stumbling on his farm-yard round. 
 Now to the woods with deep, soft sound 
 Goes fluttering the Bird of Night. 
 The cottage clock is striking five, 
 The streak of morn is gleaming, 
 The factory wheels are all alive, 
 The fire and sparks are streaming. 
 
 To north, where pine- and fir-trees float, 
 
 The earliest rays have hurried 
 
 To tinge the heath. A cow-horn's note 
 
 Across the smooth lake is carried. 
 
 The beams now touch a pale white peak, 
 
 Or on some torrent settle 
 
 That frozen hangs on ledges bleak. 
 
 Above a Lapp's tent whirls the reek, 
 
 And flames leap round his kettle. 
 
 Out on the snow, with branching horns 
 
 His deer stand in a ring there. 
 
 No house, no tower yon land adorns. 
 
 Nor is there bell to sing there. 
 
 Night seethes around, an ocean vast. 
 
 For all things come to night at last. 
 
 Thou sun, whose might bestoweth 
 
 On each least plant a quickening dower, 
 
 142
 
 Grant us thy bright creative power A Day 
 
 As long as day still gloweth ! 
 
 Keen is our heart, but time is short. 
 
 Oh, hark to our imploring, — 
 
 Thou whom our fathers once would court, — 
 
 On us thy radiance pouring. 
 
 Go forth, go forth, thou new-born day, 
 
 With morning-song and hammer-play. 
 
 May dusk-fear come not o'er us! 
 
 Kindle brave strife, our hearth-stone guard; 
 
 Send, lightning-like, a spirit sword 
 
 To flash the road before us! 
 
 Shine far across our folk and land, 
 
 Make rich our soul, make firm our hand, 
 
 So that with gladness we may bear 
 
 Such years as age shall bring. 
 
 And still like sowers onward fare 
 
 Into the world's new Spring! 
 
 143
 
 End of AT THE END OF THE WAY. 
 
 ^ Wise, O Man, thou only shalt become 
 
 When thou winn'st unto the evening coolness 
 
 Of the topmost height, the Earth o'erlooking. 
 
 Turn thee at the ending of the way, 
 
 Rest an hour, O king, and look behind thee! 
 
 All is clear there, all is reconciled. 
 
 And the realm of youth once more is gleaming, 
 
 Strewn as erst with light and morning dew. 
 
 144
 
 STARTING ON THE JOURNEY. The Journey 
 
 Already I'm upon the bridge that leads 
 
 From Earth unto a land beyond my ken, 
 
 And far to me is now what once was near. 
 
 Beneath, as formerly, the race of men 
 
 Praise, blame, and forge their darts for warlike 
 
 deeds; 
 But now I see that true and noble creeds 
 Even on my foemen's shields are blazoned clear. 
 No more does life bewilder with its riot, 
 I am as lonely as a man may be; 
 Still is the air, austere and winter-quiet; 
 Self is forgot, and I go forward free. 
 I loose my shoes and cast aside my stave. 
 Softly I go, for I would not defile 
 With dust a world so pure, all white as snow. 
 Beneath, men soon may carry to a grave 
 A wretched shape of human clay, the while 
 Mumbling a name — 'twas mine once long ago. 
 
 145
 
 JVe Mortals WE MORTALS. 
 
 We that hardly meet before we sunder, — 
 Born alike of clay, alike of wonder, — 
 On life's headland where the tempests rave, 
 Shall we loveless bide till fate shall summon? 
 Solitude awaits us all in common. 
 And the same sad sigh of grass on grave. 
 
 146
 
 THE DOVE OF THOUGHT. Dove of 
 
 Lone the dove of thought goes lagging 
 Through the storm, with pinions dragging 
 O'er an autumn lake the while. 
 Earth 's aflame, the heart 's a-fever. 
 Seek, my dove, — alas! thou never 
 Comest to Oblivion's isle. 
 
 Hapless dove, shall one brief minute. 
 Flaming, fright thee to a swoon? 
 Sleep thou on my hand. Full soon. 
 Hushed and hurt, thou'lt lie within it. 
 
 147
 
 Moonlight MOONLIGHT. 
 
 'Tis strange that I sit here in wakeful mood, 
 Though day has brought me nor joy nor gain; 
 But all of which ever my life was fain, 
 And all that was hidden in gloom and pain, 
 Is trembling to-night in yon silvery flood. 
 
 148
 
 MY LIFE. My Life 
 
 Glide on, my life ! I love thee not so much 
 
 That I would set thine hours with busy care 
 
 In a shop-window for a common show. 
 
 I never say: "Come, press the master hand 
 
 That lures to birth such wondrous lovely flowers!" 
 
 When I have been betrayed by trusted friends 
 And heavy fortune follows in my path, 
 I do not bear with me a silver cup 
 Of tears and say to him who passes by: 
 "Oh, lay thine arm about my neck and weep, 
 And pity me, and let us both lament!" 
 
 thou wide world, my greatest grief 
 Is but the shadow of a cloud. 
 
 1 go in silence to my grave. 
 
 149
 
 Heaviest THE HEAVIEST ROAD. 
 
 Hard do you press on me, dark hand, 
 
 And heavily you rest upon my head. 
 
 I vowed that unlamenting I would stand; 
 
 Boldly set garlands on my hair instead. 
 
 The sorrow of the old is other 
 
 Than bird-song grief in springtime's glow. 
 
 Around me chilling shadows gather. 
 
 The heaviest road is still to go. 
 
 150
 
 ALONE BY THE LAKE. By the Lake 
 
 Here spread the waters dark and deep, 
 Where now your ashes are lying. 
 Oh, tell me, my father, will you keep 
 The promise you made when dying? 
 Then rise, O wraith, from your watery grave, 
 Speak the word that was uttered never. 
 Oh, give the token that none yet gave, 
 If the dead may live on forever! 
 
 From the dark the surf rolls in its foam, 
 With a curve of white it enrings me; 
 A storm-cloud points to the starry dome, 
 As though some token it flings me; 
 But the desolate night is hushed in gloom, 
 And naught in answer it brings me. 
 
 No answer for him who does not see 
 
 What you, ye stars, are outpouring. 
 
 I am one with you from eternity, 
 
 With the winds and the surf's loud roaring. 
 
 Then shine for me, stars, and guide me on, 
 
 For you are my father since he is gone! 
 
 151
 
 Prayer PRAYER AMID FLAMES. 
 
 Amid ^^ . ^ . . ^ ,. , 
 pj Jholy bpirit, 1 worship thee. 
 
 Fire and Victor-Song is thy name. 
 
 Shine in our need, O spirit of power, 
 
 Shine o'er the gulf of our dread last hour, 
 
 Burn into ashes our mortal frame! — 
 
 Even in death mine arms shall be 
 
 Outstretched in prayer to thy deathless flame. 
 
 152
 
 THE JEWEL. The Jewel 
 
 Happiness is a woman's jewel. 
 Gods remorseless, fates unsparing, 
 Scanty bread — aye, that 's the cruel, 
 Bracing life for men! 
 
 153 
 
 U
 
 Shipwrecked THE SHIPWRECKED MAN. 
 
 Man . . , 
 
 After the storm 
 
 Smilingly he warms his outstretched hands 
 
 Over the quickly failing fire, 
 
 Lone on the clii¥. 
 
 With the morn, embarked on his fragile raft, 
 
 He will be saved or die. 
 
 154
 
 THE WITCH'S COUNSEL. Witch's 
 
 You ask: "Pray teach me how to set a trap 
 Within whose meshes Fortune may be caught." 
 Sit down again, my child, — 'tis lightly taught — 
 And wait with folded hands across your lap. 
 Each day the butterfly of Fortune swings 
 Around us, seeking us on wings of gold. 
 But who can teach how one may safely hold 
 The butterfly and never break its wings? 
 
 155
 
 Norway's NORWAY'S FATHER. 
 
 FcithcT 
 
 On the Death of Björnstjerne Björnson. 
 
 The late light falls on the mountain crest, 
 
 The sun goes royally down to the deep. 
 
 Weep, Synnöve,* weep ! 
 
 For great was the sun that sank to rest. 
 
 Poet, warrior, to strive is well. 
 
 Thou, sleeping chief, turnest home once more, 
 
 While round thy ship rolls the ocean swell 
 
 Toward Norway's crags and Sweden's shore. 
 
 It was brother-land; it is stranger-land. 
 
 We were hand in hand; but broken the band. 
 
 Yet the soul of the people deep within 
 
 Still breathes the eternal brother-song. 
 
 We stand and gaze at the sunset long, 
 
 And grieve for thee as one of our kin. 
 
 * Synnöve is the heroine of one of Björnson' s early stories. 
 
 156
 
 THE BURIAL OF GUSTAF FRÖDING. Gustaf 
 
 ^ , , Frödinq 
 
 rorth they go -^ 
 
 In endless procession 
 
 One by one with their silent tread. 
 
 Bells are tolling. Deep, slow, 
 
 With rumbling vibration 
 
 Singing their song to the march of the dead, 
 
 I hear, as I sit half-dreaming, 
 The bell-notes that beat from miles away. 
 All of our land, beneath winter gleaming, 
 Hears the bells as they ring to-day. 
 Summer were you and blossoming spring, 
 Sigh of the reeds by lake-lapped strands. 
 Sleep, O singer, whose bier they bring 
 Borne by a thousand hands. 
 
 White was your hair, and long your beard ; 
 The sun shone in on your Bible's page, 
 And you in your bare-walled room appeared 
 Like Job mid his ashes, bent with age. 
 How wondrous great is man's destiny: 
 Dreams and old tales and the flowing sea, 
 Floods and flames and the choir of the storm! — 
 But weak as a reed is his own frail form. 
 
 Die, die! — so echoes the cry 
 
 To him that creates with yearning passion. 
 
 All must perish, 
 
 157
 
 Gustaf All that is earthly must die, must die; 
 Fröding But no, 'tis himself that his strong hands fashion. 
 
 Pass, O bard, erect as a king. 
 
 To the host of the shades through the darksome 
 
 portal ! 
 Still we cherish 
 
 Your limpid-silvery notes immortal. 
 Singing to us as they used to sing. 
 
 158
 
 HOME-LAND. Home-Land 
 
 What old man has not in his mournful keeping 
 The smallest thing that made his life of worth? 
 He sees a door, a woman bent and weeping, 
 As toward a grave the young man journeyed forth. 
 
 He recollects each room, though poor and base, 
 Each window-sill, of myrtle faintly smelling. 
 How should the heart less fervently embrace 
 The land that is our home, our earthly dwelling? 
 
 They stand there yet by lake or lone morass, 
 Red cottages and manor-halls majestic. 
 Behind yon frosted panes our sires would pass. 
 And Yule-tide candles glowed with joy domestic. 
 
 This was their vision, this it was that drove 
 Their hands to build for us, the coming races. 
 All that which bound them unto life with love 
 Lives yet in memories round their vacant places. 
 
 By the same hearth, when evening shadows come, 
 We speak of them, some childish hand caressing. 
 O thou, our native land, our larger home, 
 Weave of our lives thy glory and thy blessing! 
 
 159
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
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