Another poem, “The Banner-Bearer of King Olaf,” pictures the strong fighter in a death he rejoiced to die.  It is a good poem of the class that nerves men to die for the flag, and it has the Old Norse spirit.  These poems are all from Massey’s volume My Lyrical Life (London. 1889).

A glance at the other poems in Gerald Massey’s volumes shows that like Morris, and like Kingsley, and like Carlyle, the poet was a workman eager to do for the workman.  Is it not suggestive that these men found themselves drawn to Old Norse character and life?  The Icelandic republic cherished character as the highest quality of citizenship, and put few or no social obstacles in the way of its achievement.  The literature inspired by that life reveals a fellowship among the members of that republic that is the envy of social reformers of the present day.  Morris makes one of the personages in The Story of the Glittering Plain (Chap.  I) say these words:  “And as for Lord, I knew not this word, for here dwell we the Sons of the Raven in good fellowship, with our wives that we have wedded, and our mothers who have borne us, and our sisters who serve us.”  Almost may this description serve for Iceland in its golden age, and so it is no wonder that the socialist, the priest, and the philosopher of our own disjointed times go back to the sagas for ideals to serve their countrymen.

We have no other poets to mention by name in connection with this Old Norse influence, although doubtless a search through the countless volumes that the presses drop into a cold and uncaring world would reveal other poems with Scandinavian themes.  We close this section of our investigation with the remark already made, that, in the tables of titles in volumes of contemporary verse, acknowledgment to Old Norse poetry and prose are not the rarity they once were, and in poems of any kind allusions to the same sources are very common.

RECENT TRANSLATIONS.

We have already noted the beginning of serial publications of saga translations, namely, Morris and Magnusson’s Saga Library which was stopped by the death of Morris when the fifth volume had been completed.  By the last decade of the nineteenth century Icelandic had become one of the languages that an ordinary scholar might boast, and in consequence the list of translations began to lengthen very fast.  Several English publishers with scholarly instincts were attracted to this field, and so the reading public may get at the sagas that were so long the exclusive possession of learned professors. The Northern Library, published by David Nutt, of London, already contains four volumes and more are promised:  The Saga of King Olaf Tryggwason, by J. Sephton, appeared in 1895; The Tale of Thrond of Gate (Faereyinga Saga), by F. York Powell, in 1896; Hamlet in Iceland (Ambales Saga), by Israel Gollancz, in 1898; The Saga of King Sverri of Norway (Sverris Saga), by J. Sephton, in 1899.  If we cannot give to these the praise of being great literature though translations, we can at least foresee that this process of turning all the readable sagas into English will quicken adaptations and increase the stock of allusions in modern writings.