But that is because the subject is so well adapted to this form of poetry.

See how the poem opens, when the poet begins to talk about what he is going to sing: "Anciently my father sang me these words in hewing the handle of his ax; anciently my mother taught me these words as she turned her spindle.

In that time I was only a child, a little child at the breast,--a useless little being creeping upon the floor at the feet of its nurse, its cheek bedaubed with milk.

And there are other words which I drew from the spring of knowledge, which I found by the wayside, which I snatched from the heart of the thickets, which I detached from the branches of the trees, which I gathered at the edges of the pastures--when, In my infancy, I used to go to guard the flocks, in the midst of the honey-streaming meadows, upon the gold-shining hills, behind the black Murikki, behind the spotted Kimmo, my favourite cows.
"Also the cold sang the songs, the rain sang me verses, the winds of heaven, the waves of the sea made me hear their poems, the birds instructed me with their melodies, the long-haired trees invited me to their concerts.

And all the songs I gathered together, I rolled them up in a skin, I carried them away in my beautiful little holiday sledge, I deposited them in the bottom of a chest of brass, upon the highest shelf of my treasure house." Now when a poem opens that way we may be sure that there are great things in it; and some of these great things we shall read about presently.