rest
Who on the billows delighteth to wander.
When I am old, to the green-growing land
I, too, will cling, with the grass for my pillow.
Now I will drink and will fight with free hand,
Now I'll enjoy my own sorrow-free billow."

I might continue in the autobiographical vein; but must forbear. For
there is a period in the life of every young Norseman when, untroubled
by its anachronism, he glories in Frithjof's melancholy mooning, his
praise of Ingeborg, his misanthropy, and all the manifold moods of love
so enchantingly expressed in Tegner's melodious verse.

When a book acquires this significance as an expression of the typical
experience in the lives of thousands, the critical muse can but join in
the general chorus, and find profound reasons for the universal praise.
In the case of "Frithjof's Saga" this is not a difficult matter. From
beginning to end the poem has a lyrical intensity which sets the mind
vibrating with a responsive emotion. It is not a coldly impersonal epic,
recounting remote heroic events; but there is a deeply personal note in
it, which has that nameless moving quality--_la note emue_, as the
French call it--which brings the tear to your eye, and sends a delicious
breeze through your nerves. All that, to be sure, or nearly all of it,
evaporates in translation; for no more than you can transfer the
exquisite dewy intactness of the lily to canvas can you transfer the
rapturous melody of noble verse into an alien tongue. The subtlest
harmonies--those upon which the thrill depends--are invariably lost. If
Longfellow, instead of giving us two cantos, had translated the whole
poem, we should, at least, have possessed an English version which would
have afforded us some conception of the charm of the renowned original.

The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which have been urged by numerous
critics may all be admitted as more or less valid; yet something remains
which will account for its astounding popularity. Tegner at the time
when he was singing of Frithjof's and Ingeborg's love was himself
suffering from a consuming but unrequited passion. The strong, warm
pulse of life which throbs in Frithjof's wrath, defiance, and scorn, and
in his deep and manly tenderness is the poet's own. It marks but the
rhythm of his own tumultuous heart-beat. It is altogether an unhappy
chapter, which his biographer has vainly striven to suppress. There was
among his acquaintance in Lund a certain Mrs