w
Tegner at his best. Schiller's "Three Words of Faith," in which liberty,
virtue, and God are declared to be the only essentials of religion,
finds a parallel (which even retains the metre) in Tegner's "The
Eternal," in which truth, justice, and beauty are substituted. A kindred
poetic creed is far more consciously proclaimed in the famous poem
_Sangen_ (Poetry), which was primarily a protest against the gloomy and
morbid view of poetry entertained by the Swedish Romanticists (the
so-called Phosphorists). Tegner here declares that the poet "with
heavenly joy embraces life," that "he knows no weak lament" (at its
misery), "no dissonance which is not dissolved" (in harmony). His temple
stands in light and flame; and at its base a fountain gurgles, a draught
from which is an elixir of strength and a panacea for all ills.

"Well, then," he continues, "from this fountain will I drink, if I am
worthy of such a draught. With healthy eyes will I look about me in the
sick world. My golden lyre shall not resound with sorrows which I myself
have invented. For the poet's sorrows are none; and the sky of song is
forever bright."

Peter Amadeus Atterbom, the leader of the Phosphorists, replied with
much moderation and good sense to the obvious reflections upon his
school which this poem contained. He intimates plainly enough that
Tegner's philosophy of life, in so far as it ignores sin and sorrow,
which are too real to be banished by song, is a hopelessly shallow one.

"The undissolved dissonances," he says, "in the sense in which Mr.
Tegner uses the expression, certainly betray a disease of the soul, but
this disease is not peculiar to a temperament which is fostered by a
personal emotional affinity for lugubrious topics and ideas given by
birth and developed by circumstances; but it is inherent in the weakness
(which at times doubtless surprises even the strongest ...) of desiring
to set up its sorrowful view of the world as a theory, and treat it as
absolutely true and fundamentally valid for all. Sorrow, as such, is no
more a diseased state than is joy; both are alike primordial, necessary,
indispensable elements and halves of human life. Who would venture to
assert that the day might dispense with the night? And does not the
latter's glorious starry sky rival in majesty (though different in kind)
the former's bright and dazzling blitheness?"

The fact was that Tegner's cheery sun-worship was as much temperamental
as was Att