Her nose is straight and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up;
     Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup;
     Her hair’s the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine,
     It’s rolling down upon her neck and gathered in a twine.

     The dance o’ last Whit Monday night exceeded all before;
     No pretty girl for miles about was missing from the floor;
     But Mary kept the belt of love, and oh, but she was gay! 
     She danced a jig, she sung a song, that took my heart away.

     When she stood up for dancing, her steps were so complete,
     The music nearly killed itself to listen to her feet;
     The fiddler moaned his blindness, he heard her so much praised,
     But blessed himself he wasn’t deaf, when once her voice she raised.

     And evermore I’m whistling or lilting what you sung,
     Your smile is always in my heart, your name beside my tongue;
     But you’ve as many sweethearts as you’d count on both your hands,
     And for myself there’s not a thumb or little finger stands.

     Oh, you’re the flower o’ womankind in country or in town;
     The higher I exalt you, the lower I’m cast down. 
     If some great lord should come this way, and see your beauty bright,
     And you to be his lady, I’d own it was but right.

     Oh, might we live together in a lofty palace hall,
     Where joyful music rises, and where scarlet curtains fall! 
     Oh, might we live together in a cottage mean and small,
     With sods of grass the only roof, and mud the only wall!

     O lovely Mary Donnelly, your beauty’s my distress: 
     It’s far too beauteous to be mine, but I’ll never wish it less. 
     The proudest place would fit your face, and I am poor and low;
     But blessings be about you, dear, wherever you may go!

From ‘Ballads and Songs.’

KARL JONAS LUDVIG ALMQUIST

(1793-1866)

Almquist, one of the most versatile writers of Sweden, was a man of strange contrasts, a genius as uncertain as a will-o’-the-wisp.  His contemporary, the famous poet and critic Atterbom, writes:—­

“What did the great poets of past times possess which upheld them under even the bitterest worldly circumstances?  Two things:  one a strong and conscientious will, the other a single—­not double, much less manifold—­determination for their work, oneness.  They were not self-seekers; they sought, they worshiped something better than themselves.  The aim which stood dimly before their inmost souls was not the enjoyment of flattered vanity; it was a high, heroic symbol of love of honor and love of country, of heavenly wisdom.  For this they thought it worth while to fight, for this they even thought it worth while to suffer, without finding the suffering in itself strange, or calling earth to witness thereof....