ore had it been made to sing so bold a melody. To
me, I admit, "Svea" is too rhetorical to make any deep impression. It
has a certain stately academic form, which, as it were, impedes its
respiration and freedom of movement. When, for all that, I speak of
wing-beat and melody, it must be borne in mind that Sweden had produced
no really great poet[29] before Tegner; and that thus, relatively
considered, the statement is true. But Tegner seems himself to have
been conscious of the strait-jacket in which the old academic rules
confined him, for in the middle of the poem he suddenly discards the
stilted Alexandrines with which he had commenced and breaks into a
rapturous old-Norse chant, the abrupt metres of which recall the
_fornyrdhalag_ of the Elder Edda. Soon after "Svea" followed, in 1812,
"The Priestly Consecration," the occasion of which was the poet's own
ordination. Here the oratorical note and a certain clerical rotundity of
utterance come very near spoiling the melody. "At the Jubilee in Lund"
(1817) is very much in the same strain, and begins with the statement so
characteristic of Tegner:

"Thou who didst the brave twin stars enkindle,
Reason and Religion, guard the twain!
Each shines by other; else they fade and dwindle.[30]
Fill with clearness every human brain:
Faith and hope in every bosom reign!"

[29] Carl Michael Bellman, the Swedish Beranger (1740-1795), whose
wanton music resounded through the latter half of the eighteenth
century, would, no doubt, by many be called a great poet. But his
Bacchanalian strain, though at times exquisite and captivating,
lacks the universality of sentiment and that depth of resonance of
which greatness can alone be predicated. Both his wild mirth and his
sombre melancholy exhale the aroma of ardent spirits.

[30] This line reads literally: "Guard them both; they are willingly
reconciled."

He was, in fact, never very orthodox; and if he had belonged to the
American branch of his denomination would surely have been tried for
heresy. Rarely has a deadlier foe of priestly obscurantism and mediaeval
mysteries worn the episcopal robes. With doctrinal subtleties and
ingenious hair-splitting he had no patience; conduct was with him the
main, if not the only, thing to be considered. The Christian Church, as
he conceived it, was primarily a civilizer, and the expression of the
highest ethical sentiment of the age.