"Still I will praise thee, oh, thou human race.
God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking!
Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show;
The name of one is man, the other's woman!
Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty,
'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat.
Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast
Is Cain's foul mark upon thy forehead branded.
"A mark quite legible, writ by God's finger;
Why did I fail ere now to heed that sign?
A smell of death pervades all human life,
And poisons spring's sweet breath and summer's splendor.
Out of the grave that odor is exhaling.
The grave is sealed and marble guards its freight,
But still corruption is the breath of life,
Eludes its guard and scatters everywhere.
"Oh, watchman, tell me now the night's dark hour!
Will it then never wane unto its end?
The half-devoured moon is gliding, gliding,
The tearful stars forever onward go,
My pulse beats fast as in the time of youth,
But ne'er beats out the hours of torment sore.
How long, how endless is each pulse-beat's pain!
Oh, my consuméd, oh, my bleeding heart.
"My heart! Nay in my bosom is no heart,
There's but an urn that holds life's burnt-out ashes;
Have pity on me, thou green mother Earth,
And hide that urn full soon in thy cool breast.
In air it crumbles, moulders; earth's deep woe
Has in the earth, I ween, at last an end;
And Time's poor foundling, here in school constrained,
Finds then, perchance, beyond the sun—a father."
[40] The poem is written in the ottava rime, but in order to preserve the sense intact I have rendered it in blank verse.
A physical disease which seems to have baffled the skill of physicians may have been the primary cause of the sufferings here described, and was no doubt aggravated by the psychical condition to which I have alluded. Now it was supposed to be the liver which was affected; then again Tegnér was treated for gall-stones. In the summer of 1833 he made a journey through Germany and spent some months at Carlsbad; but he returned without sensible relief. His foreign sojourn was, however, of some benefit in widening his mental horizon. Tegnér's intellectual affinities had always been French; and toward Germany he had assumed a more or less unsympathetic attitude. A slight acquaintance with the philosopher Schleiermacher and the Germanized Norwegian author Henrik Steffens (who was then a professor at the University of Berlin) did not, indeed, reverse his predilections, but it opened his eyes to excellences in the German people to which he had formerly been blind, and removed prejudices which had obscured his vision. He had everywhere the most distinguished reception, and was honored with an invitation to Sans Souci, where he was the guest of the witty Crown Prince of Prussia, later Frederick William IV. But these agreeable incidents of his journey were a poor compensation for his failure to obtain that which he had gone in search of. Fame, honor, and distinguished friends, without health, are but a Tantalus feast, the sweets of which are seen but never tasted.
"I fear," said Tegnér, in his hopelessness, "that my right side, like that of the Chamber of Deputies, is incurable."
"When this Saul's spirit comes over me I often feel an indescribable bitterness, which endures nothing, spares nothing, in heaven or on earth. It usually finds vent in misanthropic reflections, sarcasms, and ideas which I have no sooner written down than I repent of them."
The activity which he unfolded, even in the midst of intolerable sufferings, was phenomenal. He possessed an energy of will and vigor of temperament which enabled him to rise superior to his physical condition, and lure strong music (though sometimes jarred into discords) from the broken lyre. It was in 1829, after his illness had fastened its hold upon him, that he pronounced the beautiful epilogue in hexameters at the graduating festivities at the University of Lund, and crowned the Dane, Adam Oehlenschläger, as the king of poets:
"Now, before thou beginnest the distribution of laurels
Grant me one for him in whom I shall honor them all.
Lo, the Adam of poets is here, the Northern king among singers;
Heir to the throne in poesy's world; for the throne yet is Goethe's.
Oscar, the king, if he knew it, would give his grace to my action.
Now I speak not for him, still less for myself, but the laurel
Place on thy brow in poesy's name, the bright, the eternal.