Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/197

Rh in the middle and at the end of the verse. This necessitates a fixed cæsural pause and thus one of the chief characteristics of the metre, its flexibility and ease, was lost. But in the following parts Arrebo rids himself of these self imposed difficulties, abandons the hexameter and chooses the Alexandrine, which Opitz had recommended as the heroic metre, yet in a form very different from the French metre of the same name, but precisely as it had been preserved in Germany and as it henceforth was used for a long time in Danish epics and dramas.

The greatest of all Danish poets in the period of learning was, born 1634 in the village of Slangerup, in Zealand, where his father, who was of Scotch descent, eked out a miserable living as a weaver. He became pastor in his native village, where in 1674 he published the first part of his devotional songs ("Aandelige Sjungekor.") When the second part appeared in 1681, he was bishop in Fuhnen, where he died in 1703. Some of his hymns are set to tunes borrowed from secular ballads, some of which may have been Scotch popular airs, or they may have been composed by Kingo himself, who was very musical, in which case they may contain reminiscences of impressions made on him by tunes which he heard in the home of his childhood. All his hymns, forty-one in number, are inspired by a deep, intense faith, and by a warm poetical enthusiasm, and hence, wherever the religious sentiment and predisposition is present, they never fail to produce the proper edifying effect, and they touch the hearts of the highly cultured, no less than those of the common people. On their first appearance they were at once greeted with boundless appreciation and admiration, and many of them are still used in the service of the Danish Church, and will continue to be so used as long as the Danish tongue endures. Many of these hymns still remain