Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/55

48 With corpses was the Kringell filled,

The ravens were regaled;

The youthful blood which there was spilled

The Scottish girls bewailed.

No living soul went home again.

Their countrymen to tell

The hope to conquer those how vain

'Midst Norway’s hills who dwell.

They raised a column on that spot.

To bid their foes beware;

And evil be that Normand’s lot

Who coldly passes there!

The poet departs a little, however, from the truth, in asserting that "no living soul went home again" for, as we have seen, history tells us that, of the two who escaped, one was permitted to return to his native Scotland.

Thomas Thaarup, born in 1749, was a long time a teacher in an academy. In 1800 he became a director of the theatre, which appears to have been an office generally held by literary men; and in advancing age he retired into the country, where he lived on a pension until his death in 1821. A truthful and manly spirit, a delicacy of taste, and correctness of language, were the predominating features of his poetry. The following short extract from one of his patriotic poems will show how strongly the love of country is cherished in Denmark and Norway; for though Norway now belongs to Sweden, it must be borne in mind that for centuries it was attached to the Danish crown, and that it was not until tho overthrow of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the subsequent adjustment of the territories of Europe, that Norway was severed from Denmark to be united to Sweden:

DU PLET AF JORD, HVOR LIVETS STEMME.

Thou spot of earth, where first my voice

Its lisping infant-tones essayed,

Where I lived only to rejoice

In all the beauty Heaven had made;

Where my kind mother often sought

To guide my steps with gentle hand;

And to my dawning reason taught

The quenchless love of—Fatherland.

Oh! when in boyhood’s happy days.

Or youth's, to distant scenes we roam,

How oft our longing spirit strays

Back to that much-loved early home!

Fond memory greets each hill, each glade

Each grassy nook, each haunt of old—

Spots where his joyous childhood played.

The care-worn man smiles to behold.

From east, from west, from icy zones

Where'er the human race is found.

The name of home, comes breathed in tones

That tell it is a welcome sound.

Not the poor Greenlander would range

From his bare rocks to verdant fields.

Nor his rude clay-built hut would change

For all the richest palace yields.