Gustaf Froding - Selected Poems #264851

In the long array of distinguished Swedish poets the most striking and probably the greatest figure is that of Gustaf proding. He is at least the most powerful, the most popular and the most finely imaginative. He unites the qualities already mentioned with remarkable breadth of appeal, intellectual vigor, and a compactness of style that makes every phrase significant. In his pictures of peasant life he reminds one most of Burns, some of whose songs he translated, but his ironic humor is more like that of Heine. The visionary gift appears in poems of almost Shelleyan ideal beauty, and his power of dramatic narrative has a virility which makes the work of Kipling seem journalistic. Above all in every line we are impressed by his complete originality.