A REVIEW

"A hut - it stood, as if in thought - / was walled to the wall of the mountain side; / it stood there, where the predator wanders / took a blow from an ancient hedge. / When the storm picked up speed up to the rift, / the owner of the stone hut was not happy; / then he took the holy scriptures - / and then knelt down and worshipped.

1878

A Reunion (1878) is a story in verse of nine stanzas.

In a cabin on a deserted island, a castaway is washed ashore. The nameless one is said to be a murderer who has escaped punishment. After thirty years in solitude, he is given the opportunity on a stormy night to save a woman, and in so doing he atones for the wrong he has committed. The poem ends with the nameless protagonist being found dead with the Bible in his hand.

The poem's dramatic plot and pathos-filled form link it to other late Romantic poetry, and perhaps most strikingly is the similarity to Ibsen's Terje Vigen (1871).