music that is at once apprehended, but almost as promptly forgotten, one continual melodious solo and chorus song of spirits, zephyrs, and nymphs, whose sole fault is that it is too perfect in artistic form, too polished and smooth. The whole long dramatic poem does not contain a single characteristic or individual peculiarity, either in diction or in the mode of treatment, and yet something characteristic, that is to say, something unusually marked or sharply defined, would have had a most pleasing effect. As astonishing as is the _technique,_ it is not felt, and only where the _technique_ is present can we speak of style in the true sense of the word. Not those parts which are loaded with the greatest metrical display contain the most vital strophes, bearing most distinctly the impress of the poet's genius; they are found in the following words of Sorrow, where she casts her dark veil over the sorrowing Psyche:-- "Round each mortal's cradle flying, Close the mother's couch beside, Hordes of woes are softly sighing, Gloom and care with them abide. Tears the tender eyes bedewing, Fears the budding smile subduing, Shrieks the infant's lips are parting, While dawn's heralds onward glide. And when childhood's time is vanished, Youth's brief joy has had its day, Garlands won are faded, banished, Gone is love's bewitching play-- When, alas! the dreams have perished, Once so fondly, proudly cherished, Hide e'en dead delights and pleasures In the pangs of death away." In these stanzas the melancholy that was peculiar to Paludan-Müller becomes apparent. There is here betrayed that view of death which developed into a tendency to dwell on the thought of death, and which was destined eventually to burst forth in the love of death manifested by a Tithon, a Kalanus, or an Ahasuerus. We here detect the interest in the law of destruction which later produced the poem "Abels Död" (The Death of Abel), the belief that dead happiness embraces within itself all the pangs of death which found expression in "Tithon," and the feeling that dissolution lurks ever on the threshold of life and of joy, which so often breaks through the poetry of Paludan-Müller. Pay heed, for instance, to the following lines from the poem entitled "Dance Music":-- "Lo! the sunshine, golden, gleaming, Lights with smiles the azure skies! Yonder cloud speeds onward, beaming; Like a bird, with wings, it flies. Hear the ringing Now of singing That is filling Lofty trees with music thrilling,-- All this glory swiftly dies."