Lögberg - 21.12.1950, Blaðsíða 3

Lögberg - 21.12.1950, Blaðsíða 3
LÖGBERG, FIMTUDAGINN, 21. DESEMBER, 1950 3 much-beloved boy which he lost in childhood. The piece is marked by un- affected simplicity and a courageous close: Good-bye to summer. Autumn, I greet thee, Upon the hill that is the boundary. Behind me lies the region summer-long, Witli sunny mornings and soft plover’s song. In front a region nowise wide there shows, For on its midmost slope the sunset glows. But think thou not in sorrow bowed I stand, Though sink the sun to ev’ning’s shadow-land. \ With that land’s lord I made my peace of yore, And him I trust, for we have met before. My farewell sure to my departed friend Is: It is well with you where’er you wend. And these exactly were my words when I The last time bade my little boy good-bye. But liefer to my mind became this ground, And its dust dearer, since he rest here found. Though quail the heart in grief-filled breast to go The way that homewards leads it unto woe, Yet for the man, who shrank not, it is sure That grief unmended manhood makes endure. IX. As is natural, St. G. St. is much pre- occupied with Iceland. In one of his greatest Iceland-poems, written under the caption In Defence of the Land, the poet begins with a picturesque ex- ordium on the maid of the mountains: Of rhymes and runes thou Outgarth’s warden fairest, Ocean’s queen, set in either hem- isphere, Who mantle green and wind-blown headgear wearest, Our land of mountains, mother-island dear. In another celebration-piece he tells his audience that every Icelandic mem- ory is a tablet of gold; here he avails himself of the theme of the greatest of the Eddic poems, The Sibyl’s Proph ecy. You recall how it went, with antiquity flown, And the Anses’ world burnt, and the Flame-fiend o’erthrown, And our earth laid in ruins,—the heav- ens nine too, — So the world and the sun had to wax up anew: Yet saved there was something on which not the fire Could make any headway: gold tablets entire. —Here, Canada, lapped in the shelter- ing lea Of summer, on sward warmed by sun- light, sit we, With similar gain: each remembrance we hold Of Iceland is for us a tablet of gold. In the celebration-piece, which has become the cherished possession of Icelandic men wherever they are, St. G. St. asserts that every son of Iceland will ever bear in his mind and mien the features of his beloved land; for him it will be his heart’s ideal: Though all lands in long travels, You shóuld lay ’neath your feet, In your mind and your heart yet Your old homeland’s marks meet! You volcano and ice-sea, Fall and geyer-fount bore! Bred nigh scree-height and ling-heath! Heir to skerry and shore! O’er all earth and the heavens, In your thoughts you may fare, Still your falls and your fell-slopes All your Future’s lands bear! Near Eternity’s sea-rim Your dear isle doth abide, Like a world of spring nightless, Where the outlook is wide. ’Tis mid dream-haunts Icelandic • That your heart-hopes e’er dwell, Wherein thawed is each glacier, And enflowered each fell! You volcano and ice-sea, Fall and geyer-fount bore! Bred nigh scree-height and ling-heath! Heir to skerry and shore! And in one of his rare allusions to the classics, the poet yearns for the power of Orpheus to charm our western corn fields and woodlands overseas, to a- dorn the barren heaths of the home land: This no one knows as well as we, That we at times desire To win with art of witchery From Orpheus his lyre, So we to eástward o’er the sea, To Iceland’s moors had power To charm our grain and greenery Of woods, the wastes to dower. \ But the poet on the other hand is certain that men of Icelandic lineage have precious gifts to bestow on the land of their adoption. Nowhere does he express this idea more vigorously than in one of his celebration-poems addressed to America: Though so it prove that silenced be our lay ’Bout burg and steadings, and though no one may Our tongue remember, to oblivion swept, Yet something there will evermore be kept And cherished in your bosom’s fost’ring care, Which will of mind Icelandic witness bear. So much you need to earn you excellence, So many things, too, of a competence To match the profits of prosperity And men’s aggressive urge of energy. Though granted be that gold have worth indeed, And that a people numbers large may need, Of assets for a nation to acquire The fairest are: the saga and the lyre. It was however to Canada that St. G. St. felt the deepest loyalty. To this fosterland he dedicated, as he himself asserts, his toil, and here stood, he de- clares, the cradle of hi* children. Few if any have written more felicitously of our Canadian west. Beauties of phrase and figure abound in his de- scriptions of the country from the Red River valley to the Rockies. At times he is arrestingly concise as when he speaks of “a sand-storm by sward-ropes bound”, or leisurely and pictorical as for instance in his travel sequence En Route. Here is its opening stanza: O’er prairies and marshes the engine us took the pathway that northwards e’er led. Mid silt on our left, there meandered along the muddy and haven-calm Red, That lifts ne’er a foot o’er a channel or fall, for strength of e’en streams dies away, If wander they ever with water-arms filled by prairie-land’s murkiest clay. All featureless was the whole outlook to view, save where the wood-goddesses’ hands, On flats, along waterways’ verges had laid their leaf-woven, clustering bands. The region itself like a limitless board, all knotless, there was to be seen, Which Nature had tilted a trifle on edge, and planed, and then painted in green. At a later stage the description of the train rushing along in the night is even more striking. Here the poet identifies the engine with the Doom- ship of the Eddic mythology (Nail-Far- er): The train into space and the darkness its way circuitous, indistinct, dashed, » And never more quick was its coursing than then: \ it spurted, and hurtled and flashed. But out from me, straight and unstaying, on high each star in the firmament raced; The engine spewed embers, in breath-spasms deep, whose sparks there up-eddied and blazed; The prairie, becalmed, floated, pitch-dark, about — a deluge, wave-void, unverged — And over that calm sea of shadows our train, like Nail-Farer, flame-freighted, surged. The Bard of the Rockies a synonym for him in all places in which Icelandic speech is spoken unfortunately defies translation: it is a veritable metrical tour de force. What St. G. St. did with mountain scenery is readily seen, on a smaller scale, in his lines on Mount Lone-Dweller: So high o’er the lowly Mount Lone-Dweller towers, That ling-tufts in wonderment gaze on his bowers, And bushes turn dizzy so high up to crawl, And crag-blooms can find them no toe-hold at all. Albeit the blast that his summit all bare Oft harries, must cold be, retreats he yet ne’er: The hallowéd image of hardihood and Of frankness from fell chiselled there does he stand. Indeed with the poet’s eye St. G. St. observes and with the artist’s impulse delineates all the seasonal changes, all the miens and moods, of his cherished home-region. It is under such influ- ences, he asserts that his “weather- sensitive mind” moulds its verse. XI. Nowhere does St. G. St. express more felicitously than in the poem called At Toil’s Close, the complete harmony between the poet’s soul and his surroundings. Though it was writ- ten before he migrated to Canada, it may, in a sense, be regarded as the peaceful farewell of the farmer-poet. When sunny slopes, on summer’s eve, enswathed are The shadows by, And mid the branches of the trees the moon hangs Her half-shield high, And my perspiring brow begins to freshen Eve’s breath-cool breeze, And, after day’s work, each worn power welcomes The night-tide’s peace; When out afield the flocks’ bells tinkle clearly And quietly, And in the woods a bird’s eve-song sounds singly And plaintively, And in a half-stave seems the breeze to lisp when Most loud is she, And laughter lief of bairns by brook’s marge playing Is borne to me; No Canadian poet is more deeply responsive to the wide reaches of our west. For St. G. St. the open spaces of Alberta are essential for the freedom of men in the New World. This he puts most emphatically in the closing stanza of one of tqs admirable Alberta poems: You I love, West’s wild-land, Lea of life and nurture, With exspanse extensive, Rooming hopes unnumbered, For without you nowhere Would be fort ’gainst thraldom, And the Western freedom Be romance and falsehood. But ít was not tne region ot tne Ked nor of the Saskatchewan (of which he wrote also) that commanded the poet’s main attention, but rather, as was nat- ural, that of the Red Deer and the Rockies. The opulent majesty of his poem o’n the latter which at once made But like spots moonlit shine the fields of grain ’gainst The azure ground, And haze light-gray the hollows fills, and fills too Each dell and sound, And lowest to the east the golden stars through The branches gleam, Then in the eve’s calm sit I outside under My gable’s beam. For full my heart is then of rest and joy, Of peace my soul; And then meseems that_blitheness love and beauty Be world’s words sole, And that all things are blessing me and for me My pray’rs impart, And that the earth and heaven are at rest on The eve’s kind heart. But when at last, the day done, the accounting To end is brought, And at whatever worth the world may value The work I’ve wrought, In such a calm I fain would be to fashion A feeling lay, And give the world a reconciling hand-clasp At close of day. XII St. G. St. appears to have been little influenced by English p>oetry; indeed of modern English verse he had a r.ather poor opinion. His only poem on an English writer is a peculiar one on Shakespeare entitled The Robber. He also wrote a fragmentary piece cal- led An Epilogue to Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. From English or any other language St. G. St. translated very little; he was too original and too independent"'a poet to indulge in the restatement of the ideas of others. It should however be observed in passing that the few versions he made are extremely well executed. He evidently selected them because they were congenial to his feelings and his philosophy. Represent- ative pieces are: Ingersoll’s verse on death, Tennyson’s lines on honest doubt (In Mem. 96, 11-12), Longfel- low’s The Village Blacksmith, Kipling’s If, Robert Service’s The Stretcher Bearer, and The Last Leaf and The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wen- dell Holmes. On the other hand very little has as ^et been done by learned Canadians to bring this great Icelandic-Canadian poet to the attention and the knowl- edge of their fellow-citizens. It is to be hoped that today and its proceedings here may stimulate men’s interest in this man and his works. In the near future there will be inaugurated at the University of Manitoba, a Depan- ment of Icelandic Language and Liter ature. It will, I take it, be one of the primary tasks of the prospective in- cumbent of this chair, to interpret for Icelandic-Canadians, and for their fel- low citizens as well, the mind and art of Stephan G. Stephansson, whose significance both Alberta and Canada at large are on this occasion so signally recognizing for all times to come. With necessary alterations this ad- dress on Stephan G. Stephansson was given again in Winnipeg on Septem ber 18th, under the auspices of the Jon Sigurðson Chapter of the I.O.D. E. in aid of its fund for the Chair in Icelandic at the University of Mani- toba. The speaker took the opportun- ity of enlarging somewhat the scope of his former remarks. The principal ad- ditions were the following matters: (1). A translation of the poem The Fosterland which was read in the orig- inal Icelandic at the ceremony in Markerville by Ófeigur Sigurdsson, a friend of St. G. St. of long standing: Land to which is hallowéd My toil, my children’s cradle-stead! Put have I in lay and line Mid thy grasses poems mine; Later will thy grass for me Make o’er my head poetry. With thee as home my mind And heart are intertwined. I do not in millions measure At how much thy worth I treasure, Nor do I in verse enfold All thy praises hundred-fold. Be thou not rich, my heart Sings out that such than art: Destitute joyed I Thy fells and fields anigh. This then is verdict thine: Thou wert delight of mine. Far off if from thy side, Out to the World’s haunts wide, Were I to migrate, I Would for thy sunlight sigh, And miss thy sleet-storms, land Bare, and upbuildéd land, Storm-land and shelter-land, Land of both dell and height, Dusk’s land, and land of light, Land to which is hallowéd My toil, my children’s cradle-stead! (2) A translation of a few lines of humorous verse entitled The Potent Poets: ’Tis noised now, as greatest news, in whispers low, That f>otent poets in the Westland do not grow. But, brothers, we shall show the world our competence, For actions are irrefutable evidence. But we who Lögberg filled with verses mire-fraught, And made the ditties that Heimskringla drove distraught, We have, I think, the charge against us put to flight, Though we have not as yet employed half our might. And they their papers treble may, if they but dare, For everything will nonetheless the same way fare. (3) The following entire passage was interpolated: — It is sometimes asserted that St. G. St. was rather cold and indeed defici- ent in affection. In several passages the poet expresses his awareness of this charge and indicates that he has no desire to win with his verse the love of a maiden with her first novel on her lap. Yet such poems as those entitled Kurly and The Pretty Eyes clearly show the poet’s feeling for girl- hood and womanhood. Indeed in his poem called Amatory Verses to Iceland he explicitly asserts that he delights in everything that is beautiful whereso- ever it be “even”, he slyly adds, “on the face of a maiden”, for he does not be- lieve that “it is at all more unseemly to admire a lovely lass than it is to ad- mire a beautiful bud”. Nowhere does St. G. St. show better his insight into the imaginative mind of a maiden than in his simple rural piece entitled The Errand-Lass. “Run out to the strait”, to the maiden said I “And fetch me my Gray, and now speedily fly!” And lightfooted ran she, as fleet as the hind, But her return tarried. I waited, my mind Kept count of the hours recalling for me So much about human degeneracy, And powers judicial, and judgments and laws, That I turned a pamphlet of ethical \aws, Of punishment and about vengence sure, And I like a synod’s committee was dour. So finally when to the home-field she led My horse, I ran hurriedly up, and I said, As I the rein snatched from her, “You will receive A thorough good whipping, my girlie, this eve”. “For heedlessness”, added I harshly to her, “Does punishment which it has earned it incur”. But startled at this, to herself did she say: “Ah, sunrise, you did my returning delay”. I off my guard was, and a smile gave thereat, Yet brusquely I queried: “In what way was that?” “In this way it chances”, she answered me, “When The sun is bright-shining I many things then Behold in the world that are novel: night’s dew Seems silver and gold, and with sea-vapour blue, The vales all are filled, and the fell-tops upbear More black, as if tarred ships were voyaging there. The tree’s crests uploom like to crag-bands at sea; A hunting-place seems yonder heath-bush to be, With silken nets spread out, the branches between, All shining like silver, and ever so clean. A throng is astir by the school-house’s thatch: The swallows there flying are having a match. Continued on page 7

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