storia, vol. v.,
p. 423. Oerebro.

The story of the Swedish officer Axel and his beloved, the Cossack
Amazon, Maria, has from beginning to end a flavor of Byron, and recalls
alternately "the Corsair" and "Lara." The extravagant sentimentality of
the tale appealed, however, powerfully to the contemporary taste, and
the dissenting voice of criticism was drowned like the shrill note of a
single fife in the noisy orchestra of praise. The Swedish matrons and
maidens wept over Axel's and Maria's heroic, but tragic love, as those
of England, nay, of all Europe, wept over that of Conrad and Medora.
Maria, when she hears that Axel has a betrothed at home, enlists as a
man in the Russian army (a very odd proceeding by the way, and scarcely
conducive to her purpose) and resolves to kill her rival. She is,
however, mortally wounded, and Axel finds her dying upon the
battlefield.

"Yea, it was she; with smothered pain
She whispers with a voice full faint:
'Good-evening, Axel, nay, good-night,
For death is nestling at my heart.
Oh! ask not what hath brought me hither;
'Twas love alone led me astray.
Alas! the last long night is dusking;
I stand before the grave's dread door.
How different life, with all its small distresses,
Seems now from what it seemed of yore!
And only love--love fair as ours,
Can I take with me to the skies.'"[32]

[32] The original is in the rhymed Byronic metre, mostly in
couplets. In order not to sacrifice anything of the meaning I have
chosen to put it into blank verse.

This is exactly the Byronic note, which would be still more audible, if
I had preserved the rhymed couplets. Even Medora's male attire is
borrowed by Maria, and much more of this Byronic melodramatic heroism is
there, only a little more conventionally draped and with larger
concessions to the Philistine sense of propriety. But even if Tegner in
"Axel" had coquetted with the Romantic muse, it would be rash to
conclude that he contemplated any durable relation. The note which he
had struck in his renowned oration at the festival commemorating the
Reformation (1817), came from the depth of his heart, and continued to
resound through his speech and song for many years to come. I do not
moan to imply, of course, that the Byronic Romanticism was very closely
akin to that of Tieck, the Schlegels, and Novalis; or that Tegner in the
least compromised his frank and manly liberalis