Poems and Songs

by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

THEY HAVE FOUND EACH OTHER (FROM THE DRAMA THE KING, THIRD INTERLUDE)

Mute they wander,
Meeting yonder,
In the wondrous Spring new-born,
That though old as Time's first morn,
Brings fresh youth to all the living,
Now held fast, now far retreating,
But through hearts in oneness beating
Ever fullest bloom is giving.
Mute they wander. E'en the eye
Speaks no thought. For from on high
To their souls sweet strains have spoken
From the wide world's harmony,
Born of light, the darkness broken,
In the dawn of things to be.
Power crowned—
Earth around
Like a sun-song rolled the sound.
Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending—
Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending
Speech to thought.
But lo! quick blending,
All things speak! They sound and shimmer,
Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer,
Tint and tone combining, nearer,
Meet as one-with all their thinking
In one beauty, higher, clearer,—
Heaven itself to earth is sinking.

But in this great hour of trysting
Life is opened, its course brightened,
Growth eternal calls, enlisting
Every spirit-power heightened.

THE PURE NORWEGIAN FLAG
(Note: That is, without the mark of union with Sweden.)
(See Note 66)

I
Tri-colored flag, and pure,
Thou art our hard-fought cause secure;
Thor's hammer-mark of might
Thou bearest blue in Christian white,
And all our hearts' red blood
To thee streams its full flood.

Thou liftest us high when life's sternest,
Exultant, thou oceanward turnest;
Thy colors of freedom are earnest
That spirit and body shall never know dearth.—
Fare forth o'er the earth!

II
"The pure flag is but pure folly,"
You "wise" men maintain for true.
But the flag is the truth poetic,
The folly is found in you.
In poetry upward soaring,
The nation's immortal soul
With hands invisible carries
The flag toward the future goal.
That soul's every toil and trial,
That soul's every triumph sublime,
Are sounding in songs immortal,—
To their music the flag beats time.
We bear it along surrounded
By mem'ry's melodious choir,
By mild and whispering voices,
By will and stormy desire.
It gives not to others guidance,
Can not a Swedish word say;
It never can flaunt allurement:—
Clear the foreign colors away!

III
The sins and deceits of our nation
Possess in the flag no right;
The flag is the high ideal
In honor's immortal light.
The best of our past achievements,
The best of our present prayers,
It takes in its folds from the fathers
And bears to the sons and heirs;
Bears it all pure and artless,
By tokens that tempt us unmarred,
Is for our will's young manhood
Leader as well as guard.

IV
They say: "As by rings of betrothal
We are by the flag affied!"
But Norway is not betrothèd,
She is no one's promised bride.
She shares her abode with no one,
Her bed and her board to none yields,
Her will is her worthy bridegroom,
Herself rules her sea, her fields.
Our brother to eastward honors
This independence of youth.
He knows well that by it only
Our wreath can be won in truth.
When we from the flag are taking
His colors, he knows 't is no whim,
But merely because we are holding
Our honor higher than him.
And none who himself has honor
Will seek him a different friend;
Our life we can for him offer,
But naught of our flag can lend.

V
TO SWEDEN
Respectful I seek a hearing,
With trust in your temper sane,
And plead now our cause before you
In words that are calm and plain:

If, Sweden, you were the smaller,
Were young your freedom's renown,
Had your flag a mark of union
That pressed you still farther down
By saying that you, as little,
Were set at the greater's board
(For this is the mark's real meaning,
By no one on earth ignored),
Yes, if it were you,—and your freedom
Not hallowed by age, but young,
And a century's want and weakness
Still heavy in memory hung,
The soul of your nation harrowed
By old injustice and need,
By luckless labor and longing,
—And did you its meaning heed;
Yes, if it were you, whose duty
To teach your people were tried,
To honor their new-born freedom,
To find in their flag their guide:
Would longer you suffer it sundered,
Leave foreign a single field?
Would you not claim it unplundered,
Your independence to shield?
Would not to yourself you say then:
"If one has high lineage long,
If greater his colors' glory,
The more alluring his song.
Oh, tempt not him who from trouble
Is rising with new found might;
With pure marks direct him, rather,
To honor's exalted height."

Thus you would speak, elder hero,
If you in our home abode;
Your wont is the way of honor,
You fare on the forward road.
From eighteen hundred and fourteen,
And down to the latest day,
So oft for our independence
We stood like the stag at bay,
Brave men have risen among you,
And scorning the strife that swelled
Have talked for our cause high-minded,
Like Torgny to them of eld.

VI ANSWER TO THE AGED RIDDERSTAD

You say, it is "knightly duty,"
The fight for the flag to share,—
I hold you full high in honor,
But—that is our own affair!
For just because we encounter
The storm-blasts of slander stark,
It's "knightly duty" to free now
The flag from the marring mark.
The "parity" that mark preaches
Flies false over all the seas;
A pan-Scandinavian Sweden
Can never our nation please.
From "knightly duty" the smaller
Must say: I am not a part;
The mark of my freedom and honor
Is whole for my mind and heart.
From "knightly duty" the greater
Must say: A falsehood's fair sign
Can give me no special honor,
No longer shall it be mine.
For both it is "knightly duty,"
With flags that are pure, to be
A warring world's bright example
Of peoples at peace, proud and free.

TO MISSIONARY SKREFSRUD IN SANTALISTAN
(See Note 67)

I honor you, who, though refused, affronted,
Have heard the voice, and victory have won;
I honor you, who still by malice hunted,
Show miracles of faith and power done.

I honor you, God-thirsting soul so driven,
'Mid scorn and need the spirit's war to wage;
I honor you, by Gudbrand's valley given,
And of her sons the foremost in this age.

I do not share your faith, your daring dreaming;
This parts us not, the spirit's paths are broad.
For, all things great and noble round us streaming,
I worship them, because I worship God.

POST FESTUM
(See Note 68)

A man in coat of ice arrayed
Stood up once by the Arctic Ocean;
The whole earth shook with proud emotion
And honor to the giant paid.

A king came, to him climbing up,
An Order in his one hand bearing:
"Who great become, this sign are wearing."
—The growling giant said but "Stop!"

The frightened king fell down again,
Began to weep with features ashen:
"My Order is in this rude fashion
Refused by just the greatest men.

"My dear man, take it, 't is but fit,
Of your king's honor be the warder;
On your breast greater grows the Order,
And we who bear it, too, by it."—

The Arctic giant was too good,—
A foible oft ascribed to giants,
Who foolish trust in little clients,—
He took it,—while we mocking stood.

But all the kings crept to him then,
And each his Order brought, to know it
Thereby renewed and greater, so it
Gave rank to needy noblemen.

Honi soit … and all the rest;
Soon Orders covered all his breast.
But oh! they greater grew no tittle,
And he grew so confounded little.

ROMSDAL
(See Note 69)

Come up on deck! The morning is clear,—
Memory wakes, as the landmarks appear.
How many the islands, green and cheery,
The salt-licking skerries, weed-wound, smeary!
On this side, on that side, they frolic before us,
Good friends, but wild,—in frightened chorus
Sea-fowl shriek round us, a flying legion.
We are in a region
Of storms historic, unique for aye.

We fare the fishermen's venturesome way!
Far out the bank and the big fish shoaling,
The captain narrates; and just now unrolling
Sails run to shore a swift racing match;—
Good is the catch.

Yes, yes,—I recognize them again,
Romsdal's boats' weather-beaten men.
They know how to sail, when need's at hand.

But I'm forgetting to look towards land!
— — — It whelms the sight
Like lightning bright,—
In memory graven, but not so great.

Wherever I suffer my eyes to wander,
Stand mountain-giants, both here and yonder,
The loin of one by the other's shoulder,
Naught else to where earth and sky are blending.
The dread of a world's din daunts the beholder;
The silence vastens the vision unending.

Some are in white and others in blue,
With pointed tops that emulous tower;
Some mass their power,
In marching columns their purpose pursue.
Away, you small folk!—In there "The Preacher"
In high assembly the service intoning
Of magnates primeval, their patriarch owning!
Of what does he preach, my childhood's teacher?
So often, so often to him I listened,
In eager worship, devout and lowly;
My songs were christened
In light that fell from his whiteness holy.

— How great it is! I can finish never.
Great thoughts that in life and legend we treasure
Stream towards the scene in persistent endeavor,
The mighty impression to grasp and measure,—
Dame's hell, India's myth-panorama,
Shakespeare's earth-overarching drama,
Aeschylus' thunders that purge and free,
Beethoven's powerful symphony,—
They widen and heighten, they cloud and brighten
—Like small ants scrambling and soft-cooing doves,
They tumble backward and flee affrighted;—
As if a dandy in dress-coat and gloves
The mountains approached and to dance invited.
No, tempt them not! Their retainer be!
You'll learn then later,
How life with the great must make you greater.

If you are humble, they'll say it themselves,
That something is greater than e'en their greatest.
Look how the little river that delves
High in the notch within limits straitest,
Through ice first burrowed and stone, a brook,
Slowly the giants asunder wearing!
Unmoved before, their face now and bearing
They had to change 'mid the spring-flood's laughter;
Millions of years have followed thereafter,
Millions of years it also took.
In stamps the fjord now to look on their party,
Lifts his sou'-wester, gives greeting to them.
Whoever at times in their fog could view them
Has seen him near to their very noses;—
The fjord's not famed for his well-bred poses.

Towards him hurry, all white-foam-faced,
Brooks and rivers in whirling haste,
All of his family, frolicsome, naughty.
If ever the mountains the fjord would immure,
Their narrows press nigher, a prison sure;—
His water-hands then with a gesture haughty
Seize the whole saucy pass like a shell;
Set to his mouth, he begins to blow it
With western-gale-lungs,—and then you may know it,
Loud is the noise, and the swift currents swell.

Forcing the coast, a big fjord, black and gray,
Breaks us our way;
Waterfalls rushing on both sides rumble.
Sponge-wet and slow,
Cloud-masses over the mountain-flanks fumble;
The sun and mist, lo,
Symbol of struggle eternal show.

This is my Romsdal's unruly land!
Home-love rejoices.

All things I see, have eyes and have voices.
The people? I know them, each man understand,
Though never I saw him nor with him have spoken;
I know this folk, for the fjord is their token.

One is the fjord in the storm's battle-fray,
Another is he when the sunbeams play
In midsummer's splendor,
And radiant, happy his heart is tender.
Whatever has form,
He bears on his breast with affection warm,
Mirrors it, fondles it,—
Be it so bare as the mossy gray rubble,
Be it so brief as a brook's fleeting bubble.

Oh, what a brightness! Beauty, soul-ravishing,
Shines from his prayer, that now he be shriven
Of all the past! And penitence lavishing,
All he confesses; with glad homage given
Mirrors and masses
Deep the mountains' high peaks and passes.

The old giants think now: He's not really bad;
In greater degree he's wrathful and glad
Than others perchance; is false not at all,
But reckless, capricious,—true son of Romsdal.

Right are the mountains! This race-type keeping,
They saw men creeping
Over the ridges, scant fodder reaping.
They saw men eager
Toil on the sea, though their take was meager,
Plow the steep slope and trench the bog-valley,
To bouts with the rock the brown nag rally.
Saw their faults flaunted,—
Buck-like they bicker,
Love well their liquor,—
But know not defeat,—hoist the sail undaunted!

Different the districts; but all in all:
Spirits vivacious, with longings that spur them,
Depths full of song, with billows that stir them,
Folk of the fjord and the sudden squall.

Viking-abode, I hail you with wonder!
High-built the wall, broad sea-floor thereunder,
Hall lit by sun-bows on waterfall vapors,
Hangings of green,—your dwellers the drapers.
Viking-born race,—'t is you I exalt!

It costs in under so high a vault
A struggle long unto lordship stable;
Not all who have tried to succeed, were able.
It costs to recover the wealth of the fjord
From wanton waste and in power to hoard.
It costs;—but who conquers is made a man.
I know there are that can.

HOLGER DRACHMANN
(See Note 70)

Spring's herald, hail! You've rent the forest's quiet?
Your hair is wet, and you are leaf-strewn, dusty …
With your powers lusty
Have you raised a riot?
What noise about you of the flood set free,
That follows at your heels,—turn back and see:
It spurts upon you! —Was it that you fought for?
You were in there where stumps and trunks are rotting
Where long the winter-graybeards have been plotting
To prison safe that which a lock they wrought for.
But power gave you Pan, the ancient god!
They cried aloud and cursed your future lot?
Your gallant feat they held a robber's fraud?
—Each spring it happens; but is soon forgot.

You cast you down beside the salt sea's wave.
It too is free; dances with joy to find you.
You know the music well; for Pan resigned you
His art one evening by a viking's grave.

But while on nature's loving lap you lie,
The tramp of battle on the land you hear,
You see the steamers as they northward steer
With freedom's flag;—of your name comes a cry.

And so is torn between the two your breast:—
Freedom's bold fighters, who now proudly rally,
In nature's life and legend dreamy rest;
The former chide, the latter lures to dally.

Your songs sound, some as were a war-horn braying,
Some softly purl like streams on reedy strand.
Half nature-sprite and half as man you stand,
The two not yet one law of life obeying.

But as you seem and as yourself you are
(The faun's love that the viking's longing tinges),
We welcome you, no lock is left nor bar,—
You bring along the door and both the hinges.

Just this it is that we are needing now:
The spring, the spring! These stifling fumes we bear
Of royal incense and of monkish snuff,
Of corpses in romantic cloak and ruff,
Are bad for morals and for lungs: Fresh air!

Rather a draught of Songs Venetian, cheerful,
With southern wantonness and color-wonders,—
Rather "Two Shots" (although they make us fearful)
Against our shallow breeding and its blunders.

Spring's herald, hail! come from the forest's choir,
From ocean's roar, from armèd hosts and grim!
Though sometimes carelessly you struck the lyre,—
Where rich growth is, one can the rank shoots trim.
The small trolls jeer the gestures of a giant,
I love you so,—unique and self-reliant.

+
A MEETING
(See Note 71)

… O'er uplands fresh swift sped my sleigh …
A light snow fell; along the way
Stood firs and birches slender.
The former pondered deep, alone,
The latter laughed, their white boughs shone;—
All brings a picture tender.

So light and free is now the air;
Of all its burdens stripped it bare
The snow with playful sally.
I glimpse behind its veil so thin
A landscape gay, and high within
A snow-peak o'er the valley.

But from the border white and brown,
Where'er I look, there's peeping down
A face … but whose, whose is it?
I bore my gaze 'neath cap and brim
And see the snowflakes swarm and swim;—
Will some one here me visit?

A star fell on my glove … right here …
And here again … its unlike peer; …
They will with riddles pose me.
And smiles that in the air abound
From eyes so good … I look around …
'T is memory besnows me.

The stars spin fine their filigree,
Can hidden spirits in it be?
There haunts me something awing …
You finer birch, you snow unstained,
You purer air,—a soul you've gained?
Who is it here now drawing

His features dear in nature's face,
In all this fascinating grace,
In falling stars that cheat me,—
In these white gleams that finely glance,
In all this silent rhythmic dance? …
Hans Brecke!—comes to meet me.

THE POET
(See Note 72)

The poet does the prophet's deeds;
In times of need with new life pregnant,
When strife and suffering are regnant,
His faith with light ideal leads.
The past its heroes round him posts,
He rallies now the present's hosts,
The future opes
Before his eyes,
Its pictured hopes
He prophesies.
Ever his people's forces vernal
The poet frees,—by right eternal.

He turns the people's trust to doubt
Of heathendom and Moloch-terror;
'Neath thought of God, cold-gray with error,
He sees grow green each fresh, new sprout.
Set free, these spread abroad, above,
Bear fruit of power and of love
In each man's soul,
And make it warm
And make it whole,
In wrath transform,
Till light and courage fill the nation:
In life is God's best revelation.

Away the kingly cloak he tears
And on the people's shoulder places,
So it no more need make grimaces
To borrowed clothes some highness wears,
But be itself its majesty
In right of spirit-dynasty,
In saga's light
On heart and brain,
In men of might
From its loins ta'en,
In will unbiased and unbroken,
In manly deed and bold word spoken.

His songs the nation's sins chastise,
He hates a lie, as truth's high teacher
(No Sunday-, but a weekday-preacher,
Who, suffering, still the wrong defies).
Against false peace he plies his lance,
'Gainst cowardice and ignorance,—
No bribe he knows
From nation's hand
Nor king's command;
But his way goes.
And when he wavers, sorrow scourges
His heart and free of passion purges.

He is a brother of the small,
Of women, as of all who suffer,
The new and weak, when waves grow rougher,
He steers, till fairer breezes fall.
Greater he grows without his will
By deeds his calling to fulfil,
And near the tomb
To God he sighs,
That soon may rise
A richer bloom
To deck his people's soul with flowers
Of beauty far beyond his powers.