In the Sīpoli farmstead of Ungurpils Parish, on 18 September 1850 according to the new style, Miķelis Krogzemis was born — better known in Latvian poetry as Auseklis. He did not live even 29 years, yet he became one of the brightest poets of national romanticism: after the Valka Teachers’ Seminary he worked in schools, collected folklore, wrote about the Latvian language and antiquity, and turned history into singable self-awareness in “Gaismas pils” and “Beverīnas dziedonis.”

Auseklis belongs to the cultural generation of the Young Latvians, who in the second half of the nineteenth century shaped Latvian national self-awareness through schools, the press, folklore, and poetry. His poems lived on in choral repertoire — especially “Gaismas pils,” which later became a symbolic summit of the Song Festival tradition.