Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/269

Rh the village), the materials for which are gathered from modern life (1852). A few of Ingemann's dramatic works also date from this time. But at the same time with these works he also continued to produce lyric poems, and he occasionally wrote very fine things in this line. This is particularly true of his religious songs, which are distinguished for their sweetness, melody and love of nature. Many of them, especially the morning and evening hymns, are exceptionally inspiring and attractive and very popular. Ingemann may, without hesitation, be ranked with Kingo and Grundtvig as a writer of sacred poetry, though the style and character of the hymns of the former are quite different from those of the latter. During the last years of his life he was deeply engaged in religious speculations, the results of which he embodied in poetical compositions, such as "Tankebreve fra en Afdöd" (letters containing the thoughts of one departed). Like all his works, so these, too, are the expression of a kind, ideal view of life. He. died in 1862 in Soroe, where he had worked faithfully for forty years.

was born in Norway in 1790, and the impressions which his highly susceptible mind received in his childhood from the austere and grand nature of his native country, never left him throughout the remainder of his life, a circumstance which doubtless contributed much toward giving his poetry a strange and vague color. In the year 1803 he came to Copenhagen, where, four years later (1807), he witnessed the bombarding of the city by the English, and in spite of his tender youth he actually took part in the battle against the enemy. After he had entered the university he felt himself powerfully attracted on the one hand by the natural sciences and by Schelling's philosophy, and on the other hand by poetry, particularly Oehlenschläger's best works, and by those of the German romantic school, which