Here were their sighs anon bestowed, —
The hearts that once our burdeas bore
In distant days of yore.
The sweet, the good, is round us strown,
Ordained us from our birth;
Where’er by fate our lot is thrown,
A land, a fatherland, we own;
What rarer gift is found on earth
To cherish for its worth?
Around us spreads our native land,
Before the eye unrolled;
And we can outward stretch our hand
And joyful gaze o’er sea and strand,
And say: “For us these scenes unfold; —
Our fatherland behold!”
If we could dwell in splendor bright
Mid gold-clouds in the blue,
And life-long dance in starry light,
Where tears nor sighs could bring their blight, —
Yet to this land we’d turn anew,
With longing ever true.
CANTO SECOND. ENSIGN STAL.
In 1825 the youthful poet Runeberg, speaking in the first person as narrator throughout this Canto, was a student-tutor living at Ruovesi, near Lake Nasijarvi, in S. E. Finland, at the home of Captain E. G. of Enehjelm, whose children he was employed to teach.
Through the Captain, who had been a soldier in the war of 1808, as well as through the veteran Lieutenant, Karl Palmroth, and Ensign Karl Polviander, he learned many of this war’s stories and traditions.
But at this same home he also met an old, retired subofficer, Ensign Pelander, to whom Captain Enehjelm had given a place in his house for the remaining years of his life. Old Ensign Pelander busied himself with knitting fishermen’s nets, smoking cheap tobacco, and performing light duties about the house. Runeberg in this Canto describes the inception and progress of his acquaintance with this interesting old man, whom he chose as a model for the fictitious Ensign Stål, and who becomes the narrator of all the subsequent Cantos of the Cycle, thence called The Songs of Ensign Stål.
And so, from these various sources, as well as from historical events and details of the war of 1808-9, the poet has collected the stories most typical of military valor and best suited to his poetic purpose, incorporated them all in one cycle, and put them into the mouth of the aged Ensign.
How graphically the old man is pictured! In this poem we learn to know him well.
The aged Ensign, by the narration of these unique tales beside his cheerful hearth on winter nights, awakens the youth’s heroic spirit and patriotic fire.
Karl Vilhelm Malm (1772 — 1826) was, at the beginning of the Finnish war, Captain of the Savolaks light infantry, and was later promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. He was one of the bravest and most efficient officers.
Joakim Zacris Duncker was born 1774. He took a prominent part in Gustaf Ill’s Finnish War, was Captain of the Savolaks light brigade, and fought in many battles. He died at Hornefors July 5, 1809.
See The Fifth of July, Canto Twenty-Seventh.
II. ENSIGN STAL.
My thoughts to long-departed days
In gladnes yet awaken,
Like myriad stars with twinkling rays
That friendly to me beckon.
Come, who will follow at my side
To Nasijarvi’s darksome tide?
An old-time soldier knew I there, —
Relic of days long vanished;
An Ensign’s title did he bear,
But Fortune’s smile was banished.
God knoweth how he came one day
To dwell where I had come to stay.
I saw myself the best of men,
In all my merits vaster;
I was a student-tutor then,
And bore the name of master;
My “portion” kept me overfed, —
By grace the old man ate his bread.
I smoked the “Gefle vapen” brand,
For meerschaum pipe my fuel;
His kind he cut from leaf by hand,
When want was not too cruel;
In harder times, then moss alone
For fuel in his pipe was thrown.
O golden time, O life inspired
But for delight and pleasure,
When youthful student, vigor-fired,
Imbibes life’s fullest measure! —
Nor other worry yet doth know
Than that his moustache grows so slow!
What knew I then of others’ need?
I solely felt my gladness;
My arm was strong, my cheek was red,
My pulses beat with madness.
I was so wild, I was so young;
Such pride abode not kings among.
Indoors old Ensign Stål did sit,
Unmarked, without a grumble;
His smoke he sucked, his net he knit,
And let us others mumble.
By Heaven! When such a one you scan,
Who would not think himself a man?
It was my greatest sport to glance
Upon his bony figure,
His manner stiff, his countenance,
His coat not cut with rigor;
But most of all, his eagle nose,
Whereon his rimless glasses rose!
Down to the old man oft I drew,
To play some harmless antic.
It was my joy, when vexed he grew
And tore his netting frantic,
To take the needle from his hand,
And knit a false loop in the strand!
Then swift he’d spring; to flight bestirred,
I from the cot was driven;
Tobacco and a friendly word
Brought peace and sin forgiven.
As I had come, I came once more,
And played the same prank as before.
That he had likewise had his day,
Was once a youthful creature, —
That he had longer trod the way
Than I, with life his teacher, —
I was too learned to apprehend;
To this my thought did ne’er attend: —
That he had stood with sword in hand,
His vital blood to measure,
In war for this same fatherland
That now so dear I treasure!
I was so wild, so young a thing;
He ensign was, I more than king!
But how it happened, hear my song:
Of sports I found me sated;
’Twas winter-time, my day was long,
Though daylight soon abated;
It seemed so unlike days before,
I thought it never would be o’er.
I took a book — the first that came —
To kill the hours diurnal, —
A war-tale with no author’s name, —
Of Finland’s last the journal.
Unbound it lay, as though by grace,
But mid bound volumes held its place.
I took it to my room; I staid,
And o’er the pages fumbled;
Till strange! Mine eyes on the brigade
Of Savolaks had stumbled.
One line I read, then two I read,
And swift my heart to beating sped.
I saw a people who their all
Could yield, save honor glorious; —
Saw troops in frost and hunger’s thrall,
That yet could fight victorious.
From leaf to leaf my glances sped, —
I could have kissed the lines I read.
In peril’s hour, in combat’s fire,
What valor there I noted!
Poor fatherland, how could’st inspire
Affection so devoted, —
A love that bore such beauteous mark
In them thou fedst on bread of bark?
Then did my thought to realms unclose
Till then not imaged ever;
A life within my heart uprose
Whose charm had held me never;
As if on wings m
y day now sped; —
How short appeared the book I read!
’Twas finished, and the evening too,
Yet all my fire was burning;
I found so much I never knew,
Whereof I would be learning;
The mystic scroll I would unroll;
And then I sought old Ensign Stål.
He sat where he had sat before,
Of wonted task tenacious.
I marked, when first within his door,
His glance to me ungracious;
He seemed this question to indite:
“Can one not e’en have rest at night?”
But former thoughts from me had fled,
I came with spirit altered:
“Of Finland’s latest war I’ve read, —
A Finn myself,” I faltered.
“To hear still more my soul has burned;
Perchance by you I’ll not be spurned.”
Such was my greeting. In surprise
The old man sudden lifted
Up from his net his glowing eyes,
As o’er an army shifted;
“Yea, of those scenes can I declare,
If so you will, for I was there.”
Upon his couch of straw, uncalm
I sat, and heard the story
Of Duncker’s fire, of Captain Malm,
And former deeds of glory.
So bright his glance, so clear his brow,
His beauty I remember now.
What blood-scenes had been his to greet,
To share what perils fated, —
Not only triumph, but defeat
With sting yet unabated!
So much the world had now forgot
Lay shrined within his faithful thought.
There sat I mute, with ear intent;
No word of his was wasted;
The night already was half spent,
When from his cot I hasted.
He followed to the threshold’s rand,
And warmly pressed my offered hand.
Since then he only seemed content
With me, but not with others;
Our pain we shared, our joy we blent,
Our “vapen” smoked as brothers.
He was the autumn, I the spring, —
But student I, he more than king!
These tales, that I in song recite,
The old man’s lips repeated;
I heard them many a silent night
Beside his fire-place seated.
In simple words they leave my hand;
Receive the songs, dear fatherland!
CANTO THIRD. THE CLOUD’S BROTHER.
An unrhymed narrative in Trochaic meter — a form with which Swedish verse is replete.
The beggar child who proved to be so great a hero was named “The Cloud’s Brother” for that he knew not whence he came or whither he went. The introductory distich, taken from the body of the poem, portrays the essential thought. Love and heroism dwell in all times and places alike-
This poem — the only non-strophic one of the Cycle, — is typically epic. Its imagery is highly poetical. Its mountain-peaks are illumined with gold. All needless details are suppressed. It is planned with simplicity, wrought out with consummate art, polished to the end of every clause, as if emanating from the careful pen of Pope. It is unsurpassed in its classicism. Of all readers, the Virgil student will most highly prize this canto. In adopting so successfully the Southern style, Runeberg has shown himself a master of styles. In our introduction we have spoken of the classic similes from nature with which this poem is adorned.
Its climax, foreshadowed from the beginning, is developed with just the right movement. In neither largo nor presto tempo approaches its tragedy. Not for a single clause does its epic tread or solemn stateliness lag, nor its lofty tone relapse into the commonplace. If Homer sometimes nods, Runeberg has here neither slumbered nor slept. How splendid would be a complete Epic moving in the meter of The Cloud’s Brother! Nor does the heroine in the catastrophe yield to that very grief-emotion which the reader, for her sake, feels awakened within him. Herein lies the highest art.
This poem was the first written of all the Sagner appearing in 1835 in the Helsingfors Morgonblad, a publication edited by Runeberg.
It may have had its basis on traditions; and several writers have pointed out that a circumstance such as the soldier Klinga describes — the aged priest bound between two fiery horses — historically happened in Karelen in 1808.
To the final scene Lindblad has produced a remarkably beautiful musical setting.
The two lines preceding the last four of this canto were selected as an inscription on Runeberg’s tombstone.
III. THE CLOUD’S BROTHER.
More than living, I have learned, was loving, —
More than loving is, like him, to perish.
Deep in forests lay the humble cottage,
In the wilds, and distant from the region
Where, since autumn, had the war-fates shifted.
Yet this spot no foeman had discovered,
Nor had hostile foot yet trod the pathway
Hither leading; news of blood and battles
Came but from the cloud-borne, shrieking raven,
Or the sated kite on branch of fir-tree, —
Or the wolf, that with his blood-stained victim
Sought again the heath’s secreted caverns.
But within the cot, by the long table,
Sat the host one Saturday at evening,
Downcast, resting from his weekly labors.
Propped upon his hand, his cheek was pressing,
On the table’s end his elbow rested;
But anon his eyes aside were turning,
Restless, gazing not in one direction.
His unrest was marked not by his house-folk,
By the two who sat within the cottage,
By his foster-son nor by his daughter;
Silent, in each other’s arms enfolded,
Hand in hand, and head to head inclining,
Sat they by the hearth, of all unmindful.
But at last the old man broke the silence;
To the wise one, lucid were his meaning,
Though he sang as if for his own pastime,
And the strain came forth in words unbidden.
Thus he sang: “The bear is born as wood-king;
To adorn the heath grows up the pine-tree;
But if child of man is born for greatness,
Or for vanity and dust, none knoweth.
On a winter evening to my cottage
Came an unknown boy, like wandering wild-bird
Lost, that flutters info human dwelling;
Bare his head through slitted cap was showing,
Snow upon his feet the toe concealed not,
And his chest appeared through jacket tattered.
“Whose and whence? Nay, ‘whose’ and ‘whence’ inquire thou
Of the rich who father has and country.
From my home perchance some wind may murmur;
Cloud of air I dare to call my brother,
Though I am but snow to Night’s feet clinging,
Which she stamps off at your cottage threshold.” —
From the feet of Night the snow ne’er melted,
With the wind ne’er vanished the cloud’s brother;
Here remained the boy, to youth advancing.
For the first year ran he round unheeded;
Trees he felled the next year in the clearing; —
But the fourth, before the summer ended,
Slew a bear that had the flock invaded!
Where is now his fame, by all so treasured,
Greater than achieved by those around us?
Where his fosterer’s hope? The old man, weary,
Sits within his cottage, vainly longing
For a single message from the conflict, —
If his native land is saved or fallen.
Tongue of eagle he cannot interpret,
Cry of raven knows he not; no stranger
Ever to the waste brings up a message;
And the youth, who should have been his mainstay,
Only from a maiden’s heart hears tidings!”
As when toward the eve, a summer whirlwind,
When all nature, Sabbath-like, is silent,
Comes alone, unseen, swift as an arrow,
Striking down in forest lake, while moves not
Plant nor leaf, nor shaken is the pine-tree,
Nor on rocky strand a floweret wavers, —
Calm is all, the sea-depths only seething; —
So, when smote this strain the young man’s spirit,
Sat he dumb, stunned, motionless, and shrinking;
From his heart each word the blood had driven.
All the evening sat he by the maiden,
Went to rest when went to rest the others,
Seemed to slumber ere the others slumbered;
But a long time ere the others wakened,
With the earliest gleam of morning’s crimson,
Stole he out alone, and left the cottage.
Daylight came, the sun toward heaven was mounting,
But two only in the hut awakened.
Tasks were done, the morning bread was ready,
But appeared two only at the table.
Midday came, but still there came no third one;
Yet the old man’s brow remained unclouded,
Yet his daughter’s eyes were clear and tearless.
But to rest, although of Sunday mindful,
Neither went when meal-time now was over.
When a time had passed, — as long as passes
Ere a storm-cloud, seen on the horizon,
Comes, and bursts, sheds hailstones, and disperses, ——
— Then arose the old man’s voice consoling:
“Long the journey to the village, daughter;
Steeps are met, and streams delay one; bridges
There are none, and fall-rains swell the marshes.
He who thither went at dawn of morning,
Scare could home return ere evening darkens.”
Thus the old man. But, the speech unheeding,
Sat his daughter, as a floweret folded,
When its cup at night’s invasion closes;
What she thought, was in her own heart hidden.
Not a long time sat the noble maiden, —
Longer not than after golden sunset
Waits the wearied plant for dews of evening, —
Ere a tear upon her cheek descended,
And she sang with drooping head, and softly:
Collected Works of Johan Ludvig Runeberg Page 4