When, for all that, I speak of
wing-beat and melody, it must be borne in mind that Sweden had produced
no really great poet[29] before Tegner; and that thus, relatively
considered, the statement is true. But Tegner seems himself to have
been conscious of the strait-jacket in which the old academic rules
confined him, for in the middle of the poem he suddenly discards the
stilted Alexandrines with which he had commenced and breaks into a
rapturous old-Norse chant, the abrupt metres of which recall the
_fornyrdhalag_ of the Elder Edda. Soon after "Svea" followed, in 1812,
"The Priestly Consecration," the occasion of which was the poet's own
ordination. Here the oratorical note and a certain clerical rotundity of
utterance come very near spoiling the melody. "At the Jubilee in Lund"
(1817) is very much in the same strain, and begins with the statement so
characteristic of Tegner:
"Thou who didst the brave twin stars enkindle,
Reason and Religion, guard the twain!
Each shines by other; else they fade and dwindle.
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