Give the birches golden flowers,
   Deck their stems with silver fretwork,
   This their garb in former ages
   When the days and nights were brighter,
   When the fir-trees shone like sunlight,
   And the birches like the moonbeams;
   Honey breathe throughout the forest,
   Settled in the glens and highlands,
   Spices in the meadow-borders,
   Oil outpouring from the lowlands.

All handicrafts and art-work are, as in Homer, elaborately described: 

   Then the smiter Ilmarinen
   The eternal artist-forgeman,
   In the furnace forged an eagle
   From the fire of ancient wisdom,
   For this giant bird of magic
   Forged he talons out of iron,
   And his beak of steel and copper;
   Seats himself upon the eagle,
   On his back between the wing-bones
   Thus addresses he his creature,
   Gives the bird of fire this order. 
   Mighty eagle, bird of beauty,
   Fly thou whither I direct thee,
   To Tuoni’s coal-black river,
   To the blue-depths of the Death-stream,
   Seize the mighty fish of Mana,
   Catch for me this water-monster.

And Wainamoinen’s boat-building is one of the great incidents of the poem: 

   Wainamoinen old and skilful,
   The eternal wonder-worker,
   Builds his vessel with enchantment,
   Builds his boat by art and magic,
   From the timber of the oak-tree,
   Forms its posts and planks and flooring. 
   Sings a song and joins the framework;
   Sings a second, sets the siding;
   Sings a third time, sets the rowlocks;
   Fashions oars, and ribs, and rudder,
   Joins the sides and ribs together.

. . . . .

   Now he decks his magic vessel,
   Paints the boat in blue and scarlet,
   Trims in gold the ship’s forecastle,
   Decks the prow in molten silver;
   Sings his magic ship down gliding,
   On the cylinders of fir-tree;
   Now erects the masts of pine-wood,
   On each mast the sails of linen,
   Sails of blue, and white, and scarlet,
   Woven into finest fabric.

All the characteristics of a splendid antique civilisation are mirrored in this marvellous poem, and Mr. Crawford’s admirable translation should make the wonderful heroes of Suomi song as familiar if not as dear to our people as the heroes of the great Ionian epic.

The Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland.  Translated into English by John Martin Crawford. (G.  P. Putnam’s Sons.)

POETICAL SOCIALISTS

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889.)