But as I stand here now to-day,
Nor grudge nor vengeance can me sway,
To think that foes I'm facing.
So in return some friendship give
To one who for the cause would live,
With love the North embracing!
But first my poet-path shall be
With veneration unto thee,
Who fill'st the North with wonder;
In wrath thou dawn didst prophesy
Behind the North's dark morning-sky,
That lightnings shook and thunder.
Then, milder, thou, by sea and slope,
The fount of saga, faith, and hope
Mad'st flow for every peasant;—
Now from the snow-years' mountain-side
Thou seest with time's returning tide
Thine own high image present.
To thee, then, in whose spring of song
Finland's "the thousand lakes" belong
And sound their thrilling sorrow:—
Our Northern soul forever heard
Keeps watch and ward in poet's word
'Gainst Eastern millions' morrow.
But when I stand in our own home,
One greets me from the starry dome
With wealth of light and power.
There shines he: HENRIK WERGELAND,
Out over Norway's pallid strand
In memory's clear hour.
OLD HELTBERG
(See Note 50)
I went to a school that was little and proper,
Both for church and for state a conventional hopper,
Feeding rollers that ground out their grist unwaiting;
And though it was clear from the gears' frequent grating
They rarely with oil of the spirit were smeared,
Yet no other school in that region appeared.
We had to go there till older;—though sorry,
I went there also,—but reveled in Snorre.
The self-same books, the same so-called education,
That teacher after teacher, by decrees of power royal,
Into class after class pounds with self-negation,
And that only bring promotion to them that are loyal!—
The self-same books, the same so-called education,
Quickly molding to one type all the men in the land,
An excellent fellow who on one leg can stand,
And as runs an anchor-rope reel off his rote-narration!—
The self-same books, the same so-called education
From Hammerfest to Mandal—('tis the state's creation
Of an everything-and-every-one-conserving dominion,
Wherein all the finer folk have but one opinion!)—
The self-same books, the same so-called education
My comrades devoured; but my appetite failed me,
And that fare I refused, till, to cure what had ailed me,
Home leaving I leaped o'er those bars of vexation.
What I met on the journey, what I thought in each case,
What arose in my soul in the new-chosen place,
Where the future was lying,—this to tell is refractory,
But I'll give you a picture of the "student factory."
Full-bearded fellows of thirty near died of
Their hunger for lore, as they slaved by the side of
Rejected aspirants with faces hairless,
Like sparrows in spring, scatter-brained and careless.
—Vigorous seamen whose adventurous mind
First drove them from school that real life they might find—
But now to cruise wide on the sea they were craving,
Where the flag of free thought o'er all life wide is waving.
—Bankrupted merchants who their books had wooed
In their silent stores, till their creditors sued
And took from them their goods. Now they studied "on credit."
Beside them dawdling dandies. Near in scorn have I said it!
—"Non-Latin" law-students, young and ambitious,
"Prelims," theologs, with their preaching officious;
—Cadets that in arm or in leg had a hurt;
—Peasants late in learning but now in for a spurt:—
Here they all wished through their Latin to drive
In one year or in two,—not in eight or in five.
They hung over benches, 'gainst the walls they were lying,
In each window sat two, one the edge was just trying
Of his new-sharpened knife on an ink-spattered desk.
Through two large open rooms what a spectacle grotesque!
At one end, half in dreams, Aasmund Olavsen Vinje's
Long figure and spare, a contemplative genius;
Thin and intense, with the color of gypsum,
And a coal-black, preposterous beard, Henrik Ibsen.
I, the youngest of the lot, had to wait for company
Till a new litter came in, after Yule Jonas Lie.