fied; I know that thou
Art fain to dream that I am happy now,
And for that seeming ever do I strive;
Thy half-love, dearest, keeps me still alive
To love thee; and I bless it--but at whiles,--

(P. 343)

And thus she gains strength to live her life.

Here, then, in Bodli, is another of the great tragic figures in
literature--a sick man. There are many of them, even in the highest rank
of literary creations, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth! Wrong-headed,
defective as they are, we would not have them otherwise. The pearl of
greatest price is the result of an abnormal or morbid process.

Bodli comes to us from Icelandic literature, and in that fact we note
the solidarity of poetic geniuses. Not only is the great figure of Bodli
proof of this solidarity, but many other features of this poem prove it.
"Lively feeling for a situation and power to express it constitute the
poet," said Goethe. There are dramatic situations in "The Lovers of
Gudrun" which hold the reader in a breathless state till the last word
is said, and then leave him marveling at the imagination that could
conceive the scene, and the power that could express it. There are
gentler scenes, too, in the poem, where beauty and grace are conceived
as fair as ever poet dreamed, and the workmanship is thoroughly
adequate. As an example of the first, take the scene of Bodli's mourning
over Kiartan's dead body. It is here that we get that knowledge of
Bodli's woe that robs us of a cause against him. What agony is that
which can speak thus over the body of the dead rival!

... Didst thou quite
Know all the value of that dear delight
As I did? Kiartan, she is changed to thee;
Yea, and since hope is dead changed too to me,
What shall we do, if, each of each forgiven,
We three shall meet at last in that fair heaven
The new faith tells of? Thee and God I pray
Impute it not for sin to me to-day,
If no thought I can shape thereof but this:
O friend, O friend, when thee I meet in bliss,
Wilt thou not give my love Gudrun to me,
Since now indeed thine eyes made clear can see
That I of all the world must love her most?

(P. 368.)

Examples of the gentler scenes are scattered lavishly throughout the
poem and it is not necessary to enumerate.

One other sign that the Icelandic sagaman's art was kin to the English
poet's. The last line of this poem is given thus by Morris: