Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/18

 to think of Tagore, Verhaeren, Vildrac, Carducci, and Dario. People have heard the names at least. The pioneer of modern Scandinavian authors was the Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen, but he was soon followed by the Swedes, August Strindberg and Selma Lagerlöf. Now that the Swedish play and the Swedish novel have won their place, we should be quite ready for the entrance of Swedish poetry.

There are many reasons why this poetry should appeal particularly to American readers. In the first place, it may well trust to its intrinsic merits. Critics such as Mr. Edmund Gosse, who are conversant with the best in nearly every literature, agree that Swedish narrative and lyric poetry during the last hundred and fifty years will compare favorably, both in form and substance, with the poetry of any literature during a like period. There are at least nine poets of a rank similar to that of Burns, Byron, Shelley, Browning, and Poe. Furthermore, the Scandinavian genius is closely akin to us; it has the same seriousness, the same vigor, the same nobility of feeling. With a fine range of imagination it combines a closeness to earth which conveys a distinctively national flavor.

The Swede, having tilled his ancestral soil for longer than any other European race, has the deepest attachment to it and has furthermore inherited a treasure of legend and historic association. Love of nature is an almost universal trait, as is testified by the splendid landscape paintings which were recently