Release date is 2025-11-13

Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

"Kynäelmiä III" by Kaarlo Hemmo is a collection of poems written in the early 20th century. It gathers patriotic lyrics, reflective and devotional pieces, temperance verses, children’s rhymes, and occasional poems, all steeped in Finnish nature, identity, and civic virtue. The tone blends lyrical praise of the homeland with moral exhortation, favoring unity, work, purity, and modest, steadfast love.

The opening of this collection invokes the Muse and sets a lofty, idealizing mood before turning to a patriotic suite that extols Finland’s seasons, urges labor and love of country, laments “a sick motherland” divided by internal strife, and calls for unity and courage. Vignettes and allegories follow: a Kuokkala coachman’s tale hinting at cultural loss, a juniper image for national resilience, and a dream of forced alien uniform that ends in a vow to remain Finnish at heart. The tone then softens into personal meditations—remembering a mother’s prayers, pleading for inner cleansing, warning against a butterfly life of empty pleasures, and sketching tender love-scenes and travel glimpses—all in simple, rhymed diction. A vivid temperance narrative shows Tuomo Tuoppi losing money and dignity to drink before repenting, while short pieces for children mix humor and gentle moral lessons. The section of occasional poems celebrates wholesome winter sport, a peril-and-rescue sea scene, tributes to cultural figures, civic pride in a new railway, and, finally, a ringing call for concord, where the excerpt breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Pori: Gust. Ronelius, 1909