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FRANZ MICHAEL FRANZEN,

Who died Bishop of Hernösand in Norrland, is, on the contrary, more celebrated for his lyrics of social life, but not like Fru Lengren, sparkling with satiric fires. Of all Sweden's poets, he most resembles our own Wordsworth in his smaller poems. There is the same extreme of simplicity. His subjects are drawn from the same sources, in lowly life, and open nature: and there is in him the same wise, kindly and almost childlike nature. In his larger poems he did not succeed like Wordsworth. He has no "Excursion" to show; for his larger poems, and fragments of poems, though containing splendid parts, are generally heavy as wholes. These larger works are: "Emile, or an Evening in Lapland;" "Columbus," an unfinished epic; "Gustavus Adolphus in Germany,' also an epic fragment in twenty cantos: "Svante Sture," a metrical romance in imitation of Sir Walter Scott; "A Picture of Freedom;" "Julia de St. Julian," a poetical story; and "The Lapland Girl in the King's Garden," and "The Murder on Elgarös," dramas.

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The "Evening in Lapland" has, as may be imagined, much that is wild, new, and striking to the imagination of an Englishman, much idyllic beauty and charming painting of simple and peculiar manners; but the harmony of the whole is painfully disturbed by the strange, fretful temper of the hero. This is another Abelard who, engaged to teach the beautiful daughter of a nobleman, engages her affections, and secretly marries her. The family enraged, desert the bride, and only procure a country church living for the husband in Lapland, in order to remove the offending pair quite out of the way. The young lady follows her husband cheerfully, quitting all the luxuries and

advantages of her former position, without a murmur, and enduring all the hardships of a winter journey into such a country, with a fortitude only known to true affection. The "Evening" is the wild winter evening on which they arrive at the remote parsonage, where the bride does all in her power to comfort and console her husband; but he, strangely enough, makes her only miserable in return, by bitterly regretting her loss of all her former wealth, jewels, rich dresses, and all the splendour and amenities of high society. It is only at the close that he begins to yield to his noble wife's admirable reasonings and tender and unselfish persuasions. We turn with delight to Franzén's lyrics.

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Here we find simplicity which is often enchanting, though sometimes, like Wordsworth's in "Betty Foy," "The Waggoner," and "Peter Bell," almost approaching to poetry intended for children and not for grown men. The Swedes themselves notice the resemblance of the poetry of Franzén to that of the Lake school-to the delineation of the natural, the domestic, the idyllic, and the beauty of childhood. They represent," says Leopold, "now a picture out of the Saga times, in all the truth of its antique painting; now a romantic sorrow; and now again a simple trait of the heart and of life; a smile of innocence, a tear of pity, an outbreak of childlike joy, as if they were struck off in haste but prevented from again escaping." It is in the idyllic and the lyric that he is entirely at home. Nature smiles and blooms under his eye, and night, in its simplest and loveliest scenes, displays its pleasures and affections. There is pleasant humour but no satire in his verse. "How could there be any satire," asks one of his countrymen, "in such childlike, pleasant eyes, with such a pious mild countenance, with that evangelic hair, combed à la Jean Baptiste ?"

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Amongst his most charming poems of a joyous cast, are Champagne, "Moments of Joy," "The Little Ones." Amongst those of a higher character: "The Human Countenance," "The Hours of Life," "The Higher Life," "The Stars," "Mother and Son," "The Blessing," "The Regret," "To those at Home, "The Burial Day," and "An Inward Reconciliation.” Immensely popular as Franzén is in Sweden, they are the qualities of heart, unmixed affection, the deep-felt and happily described home blessings and home incidents, with the gladsome, carefree, and felicitous appreciation of the beauty of life and nature, which give him his great charm. No one regards him as a great genius in the guise of a simple country poet: no one looks through his two handsome volumes of "Skaldestycken"-Poetic Pieces to discover some grand scheme of philosophy under the playful or rural guise of the most extraordinary poetic simplicity. "His poetry," says Sturzenbecher, "is no mighty Niagara hurling its foam over rocks and woods, but a murmuring stream, wandering through the dale, to which the neighbouring people come to refresh themselves." Perhaps the piece which he calls "The Little Ones" may give a good idea of his manner in his domestic poems. It is related by a young girl who, the evening before, had received a handsome veil as a Christmas gift, and had been to morning service in it.

Franzén was born at Uleåborg in Finland, in 1772, and was educated at Åbo, where he became a teacher. A poem on Creutz was that which first gave him a poetical popularity, and showed that he had abandoned the bombastic and unnatural style which was then regarded by many in Sweden as poetry. In 1795 and 1796, he made a tour through Denmark, Germany, Holland, France and England. During his absence he was appointed Librarian

to the University of Åbo, and was there for two years Professor of Literary History, and afterwards of History and Morals. When Finland passed to Russia, Franzén went to Sweden and received the rich living of Kumla, in the district of Örebro. In 1835, he was called to the capital, as the incumbent of St. Clara; and, in 1831, he was made Bishop of Hörnösand, where he died in 1847. As Historiographer of the Swedish Academy, he wrote a considerable number of the biographies of the distinguished members, under the name of "Memorials of Honour;" and, in his later years, he took the field in his poetry against the doctrines of Strauss and the Rationalists.

CHAMPAGNE.

Drink! drink the fleeting, the foaming

Sunny pearls: drink!

Hasten! the essence bright, sparkling and winking,
Seek'st thou in vain if a moment be lost.

Fools, who stand watching the bubbles, not drinking,
Get only water, poor water, at most.

Seize thou the flying, enchanting
Passing hours: seize !

Pleasures extremest, feelings the sweetest,
Waken and die, like the flower of a day.

Seize as they pass on those raptures the fleetest ;
Highest the rocket as it dies away.

Short-lived on earth is that maddening
Rapture, ah! short.

Seized by the youth ere experience is warning,
Now from the grape-juice ennobled and bright,
Now on a mouth like a rose-bud of morning,
Then straight hath it taken for ever its flight!
VOL. II.

THE HORIZON.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN A CHILD AND ITS MOTHER.

"See! where to earth bends down the sky;
See how the morning clouds up-rolled
Tinge the far forest with their gold.

And we delay--both thou and I,
To go to Heaven, my mother dear,
When every day it is so near."

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Come," said the mother, "no delaying-
Come, let us go then ;" and they went,
On heavenly objects both intent,-
And onwards through the woodlands straying,
'Mid shadows soft and purple light
Seemed Paradise itself in sight.

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Eden itself; what fruit? what flowers;
And yet-Heaven is not in these bowers,
O'er church and moor it seems to flee.

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"Hear'st thou that voice in mid-air pealing;
Us doth it to God's house invite.

This is his day; on this his light,
Comfort and peace he is revealing.

There stands his church in day's clear flame;

Thy heart within it glow the same.

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