Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/12

 believe that it is possible to give readers of English a somewhat better account of Heidenstam, who depends more equally on form and substance. The favorite single poem in the plebiscite was the Pilgrim's Yule Song here published for the first time in translation. The Dagblad's list was of great assistance in making the selections for this volume. In details of the work I have been ably assisted by the revision of the reader of the Yale University Press. Mrs. A. B. Fries and Mr. Edwin Björkman have also helped with knotty passages. In the Introduction I have made use of material in an article by Miss Hanna A. Larson in the New York Evening Mail for Feb. 16, 1918.

No liberties have been taken with the original text except that I have furnished separate titles to the "Thoughts in Loneliness" so as to assist the reader in reference. The order of the poems is the same as in the Swedish, except that the "Thoughts in Loneliness" have been shifted from before "The Happy Artists" to the end of the selections from Pilgrimages. The metres and rhyme-schemes are followed carefully, except in a few minor instances. Although I have endeavored primarily to make my translations good English poetry, with no suggestion that they are other than first-hand, I believe that I have been able to follow the Swedish more closely than in my previous volumes. In the few prose sketches I have tried to suggest the cadence as well as to give the meaning of the Swedish prose.