The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Side 63

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
61
Life a bridge of terrors
Is for me and you;
You may think me larger,
Yet I’m little too.
Do not joy and sorrow
Meet us both alike?
Common laws of living
Through our pulses strike?
Sure the self-same essence
Each his breath supplies;
The same eternal spirit
Peeps out through your eyes.
To my heart’s affection
My own home is best;
Dear to you, my rnousie,
Is your own wee nest.
Though my strength far higher
In the scale may mount,
Does no gift of mousehood
Balance the account?
At your grief and panic,
All my passions fall;
I must call you sister,
Spare you after all.
These are the words of a man who
had compassion for every living thing,
a man who gave affirmations to life
with every breath, one who would call
no man friend who needlessly put his
foot upon a spider.
After the political meeting, of
which I have been speaking, I sought
out Dr. Johannesson to tell him how
much I had appreciated his remarks.
I did not see him again for several
years—until, in fact, I moved onto the
next street to the street on which he
was living. Then I saw him frequently.
In the dead of winter, he would be
dressed in a shabby coon-skin coat, his
physician’s bag in his hand, tramping
the streets, carrying comfort to the
Dr. Sig. Jul. Johannesson
sick, with the last thought in his mind
of using his receipt book. One day he
stopped me, we had a chat, and he
invited me to his home.
Dr. Johannesson made quite a contri-
bution to my education. One thing
which he did for me, for which I have
always been sincerely grateful, was to
introduce me to the Icelandic poets,
in English translation, of course, be-
cause of my limitation. I first heard the
great names of Stephan G. Stephans-
son and Guttormur J. Guttormsson,
from his lips.
In an article in the Winnipeg Tri-
bune recently, I tried to express some-
thing of my appreciation of Guttorms-
son’s poetry—that is the few echoes
from the Icelandic that I have been
able to overhear in English trans-
lation.
(Continued on page 83)