University of Virginia Library

I was walking alone in the heathy uplands of Sweden,
In a day of delight; when the radiant Spirit of Summer
Wooed, in his passionate prime, the frank brave heart of the Norland
To expand in his beams; when, palpitating in sunshine,
Ravished of winter-woven robes, serene in her beauty,
Proudly her limbs Titanic she bared, and bountiful bosom,
And, new clothed in delight, abandoned herself to her lover.

O, believe me, 'tis here alone in the cloudlands of Hertha,
Here alone that the heart can be filled with the joy of their nuptial,
When the young Summer first kisses the Earth. A jewelled Sultana,
His voluptuous East would hold him captive for ever,
Drugged with her spicy philtres; the bliss of meeting and parting,
Love's sweet rhythmical ebb and flow, the romance of a passion
Wholesome with rapture and rest—an ocean that knows not stagnation—
These are the North's. All nature, rejoicing, blesses the bridal,
When in the odour-breathing Norland, the Spirit of Summer
Wafts from his breezy wings a dewy quintessence of sunshine,
And descends in a shower of delight on highland and lowland;
When the mountains grow green to their tops with juiciest herbage;
And far up, with lows of content, to pasture are driven
Cows, deep-uddered, and milk abounds, and in opulent dairies,
Maids at the foaming churn try fortunes; when down to the valleys
Comes, with his reindeer, the mild-eyed Finn, good-humouredly singing,
Happy to water his herds in the reach of the glittering river;
When the pine and the birch exhale their odours balsamic;
When the raspberries breathe their dim delicious aroma,
And, where they drink the sweets of the sun in the glades of the woodland,
Strawberries ripen; when fiords, bights, bays—ay, the waves of the ocean
Spawn with abundance of life. O there, in happiest season,
There was I walking alone—when toward me, stepping like Hertha,
Came a maiden fair, a blonde Scandinavian Maiden.

Swiftly toward me she came, her well-shod feet and well-stockinged
Planted clean on the turf, beneath her kirtle of home-spun,
Beautiful, cowlike, august—the stern, sweet curves of her figure
Clear a moment against the blue, as she crested a hillock—
Beautiful, cowlike, august, an Isis bred in the Norland!

Swiftly toward me she came, her full yet firm-moulded bosom
Drinking great lungfuls of life, as she skirted the slope of the mountain,
And her clear voice rang like a silver flute thro' the valley—
Chanting some quaint old lyric—some grave significant folk-song,
Born from a nation's heart, and breathing its passionate longings
In the face of the firmament. Forests, rivers, and mountains;
And the wave-washed fiords; and waterfalls thundering ever
Through their foam-lighted glens; and pastures green of the upland—
Had their part in that folk-song; the warrior-shout of the Sea-kings;
And the low of cows, and the homely mirth of the farm-stead,
Hailing the harvest home; life, death, and winter, and summer,
Had their part in that folk-song. The frank brave heart of the Norland
Breathed it out in the sun, as balm is breathed from the pinewood.
It was exhaled, none made it, it never had a composer,
He who chanted it first lived on and sang in her spirit.

Nearer she drew, lithe-limbed, a living robust Caryatid,
On her head a basket of dainties fresh from the dairy,
Lapped in a fair white napkin, and poised with delicate balance
Over her shoulders broad, which harmonised every motion
As in a natural dance. O did she dream of her beauty?
Her large grace? She felt it but ease, was but conscious of keeping
Poised her butter and cheeses—her rhythmic muscles obeyed her
With the gladness of tune—I read no toil in her features;
And she knitted the while, scarce glancing down at her fingers;
For her soul was a song, her motion a musical measure!

Back on the wings of Time was I borne for ages and ages,
Back on the wings of Time, to lands far distant, and saw the
Tents of a wandering race, the tents of our Aryan fathers,
Pitched in primæval pastures, their cattle lowing around them;
And their kings were shepherds, and in their primitive language
Milkmaid and princess were one. Here moved an Aryan Princess!

Blue were her eyes, as the skies on a day of serenest weather,
Or forget-me-nots, gage of unchangeable, innocent, troth-plight;
Sweet was her face, with a grace the gift of the rain and the sunshine,
And her cheeks glowed bright with blood of healthiest breeding.

As she approached me the song on her lips died gently, not shyly,
And she met my gaze unembarrassed, and greeted me kindly,
Gave me a genial ‘Good morrow!’ then, pausing, spoke in her patois,
In her grave pure voice, some further words, which, alas! were
Lost on my ears. I could but smile; and answered in English:
‘Don't understand you, my girl.’ But in the depths of my bosom
Those strange words were singing a ‘Welcome, welcome to Sweden!’

Cowlike I called her before, but how shall I picture the beauty
Latent in that rich word—the exuberant feminine beauty,
Seeming to gather in form supreme the teeming abundance
Of the mother-force of the earth? O you comprehend me,
You who have heard in the Alps the tinkling tune of the cowbells,
You who have watched, some evening, a well-cared, thorough-bred heifer,
Mountain-bred, mountain-miened, descending the paths of the mountain,
Sure of foot as a Gemse—your heart has leapt to behold her
Large beneficent grace, as she walked sedately and neatly
At the head of the herd! But, let me ask, have you ever
Spoken to such a cow in your own vernacular English?
Well, I have; and I tell you that now as I spoke to the Maiden—
I remember it well—that now, as I answered in English,
Over her face there passed a wistful puzzled expression,
Such as I then have observed in a cow's. 'Twas as though she were seeking
Entrance to some far world, half seen in innermost vision—
Strange, bewild'ring, remote from the placid fields of her spirit.
But in a moment her eyes lit up with sunniest humour,
(Never did cow's do that; and truly for use of her fingers
Never was cow came near my blonde Scandinavian Maiden).
How those eyes lit up as she smiled! ‘I see you're a stranger.’
So, I imagine, she said; then bade me farewell, and we parted;
She on her way, I on mine. I gazed at the beautiful figure
As it passed from my view. Then first I noted with rapture
How her womanhood's strength burst forth in the glorious profusion
Of her hair, thick wound in plaits—what a pad for a basket!
Wonderful hair it was, like hemp for the galleys of Odin,
Clean first-quality Norway hemp, with luminous surface,
And the gleam of straw just playing over its masses.
How it burst from those plaits, in its vital exuberant beauty,
Burst from those careless plaits, and waved in wisps on her shoulders,
Dancing warm on the wind!

Alas! she was gone—and the sunshine
Passed with her from the day. She went—I lost her for ever!
Never again to behold her! O fool to yield her so tamely!
Fool, to let her sink back in the ocean of vague apparition
Where we float immersed, like lumps of jelly Medusan!
Fool, when a glance, a touch, a word, a step might have won her!
O to snatch her away, to possess her, to live in her beauty;
To awake her soul; to thrust it forth, like an eaglet
Fledged, from its narrow eyrie; to watch its pinions grow stronger,
Breasting the storms of the world, with the wisdom of love to sustain them!
O to fling my past to the winds for her, toil as a peasant,
Feel my pulses bound with the stalwart life of the Norland;
To grow sane in her love; to surrender myself to her keeping;
To surround her with blessing; to make her the beautiful mother
Of a beautiful race, in some far Scandinavian valley!
O to—!
‘Well I declare, what stuff the man has been writing!
(Only Mary and me—you needn't look so dumbfoundered.)
This is some idle romance your foolish brain has been weaving—
Why, you were never in Sweden: Now, were you ever in Sweden?’
‘In the spirit, my child, I was just now, when you thrust your
Dear inquisitive face between my eyes and the vision.
There, O long, long ago, in pre-matrimonial ages—
There I once saw Thekla, that blonde Scandinavian maiden,
That divinest milk-maiden, before those tricks demimundane
We were deploring last night, as she sang at the popular concert,
Hid her goddess-ship's wholesome bloom in violet-powder.
That was all.’
‘Indeed! In Sweden? and never to tell one?
Don't believe it a bit! But really I cannot have patience
With the pitiful way you men get on about women.
You're the ungratefullest things—you never will understand us,
Never will be contented, however we strive to please you.
Just when we've left our rustic ways, our homely vocations,
Our domestic receipts, our plaisters, our wonderful cordials,
All to please you, because—’
‘We insist on having Corelli,
Dished us in mangled morsels by fingers that better were sewing?
Heaven forgive us our sins if we do!’
‘'Ssh, don't be provoking!
Poor dear Jane,—what a shame to speak like that of her music!
No, you know very well our wise intellectual masters
Could not put up with such drudges—poor soulless housekeeping creatures:
Wanted ‘companions’ forsooth, had felt themselves ‘not comprehended’—
O if you only knew, you stupid things, how we read you
Through and through, like a book’—
‘Ay, skipping all but the fiction.’
‘Nonsense! I say 'tis you men who wreck your lives upon fiction,
And what fictions, the most of you! Ay, and even the best ones,
How they blunder about, poor souls, with their precious ‘ideals.’
Thorns at last will bear grapes, they think, figs grow upon thistles,
And extremes lie down, like the lion and lamb, in their Eden.
We make both ends meet in a much more practical fashion.
But what I say is that now, when we hens are, really and truly,
Doing our painstaking best to make ourselves mates for you eagles,
Fluttering after your Lordship's dreams no doubt at a distance,
Off you fly in a pet, and sigh for some beautiful savage,
Cowlike! with hair like hemp! and so forth—O when you get her,
See that she washes her face and the rest of her wonderful person—
Mary could tell you such things of the dirt of those horrible Germans!
Well, we English at least are teaching the world two great lessons:
How to make drinkable tea, and the use of good soap and cold water.
There, I hear your ‘beautiful race’ upstairs in his cradle;
Do put by those things, and go and get ready for dinner.’