Toward God in heaven spacious
With artless faith a boy looks free,
As toward his mother gracious,
And top of Christmas-tree.
But early in the storm of youth
There wounds him deep the serpent's tooth;
His childhood's faith is doubted
And flouted.
Soon stands in radiant splendor
With bridal wreath his boyhood's dream;
Her loving eyes and tender
The light of heaven's faith stream.
As by his mother's knee of yore
God's name he stammers yet once more,
The rue of tears now paying
And praying.
When now life's conflict stirring
Leads him along through doubtings wild,
Then upward points unerring
Close by his side his child.
With children he a child is still
And whatsoe'er his heart may chill,
Prayer for his son is warming,
Transforming.
The greatest man in wonder
Must ward the child within his breast,
And list 'mid loudest thunder
Its whisperings unrepressed.
Where oft a hero fell with shame,
The child it was restored his name,
His better self revealing,
And healing.
All great things thought created
In child-like joy sprang forth and grew;
All strength with goodness mated,
Obeyed the child's voice true.
When beauty in the soul held sway,
The child gave it in artless play;--
All wisdom worldly-minded
Is blinded.
Hail him, who forward presses
So far that he a home is worth
For there alone possesses
The child-life peace on earth.
Though worn we grieve and hardened grow,
What solace 't is our home to know
With children's laughter ringing
And singing.
+
OLE GABRIEL UELAND
(See Note 46)
Of long toil 't is a matter
Through many a silent age,
Before such power can shatter
Time-hallowed custom's cage.
The soul-fruit of the peasant,
Though seldom seed was sown,
It is our honor present,--
Our future sure foreknown.
The fjords that earnest waited
'Mid mountain-snows around
His childhood's thoughts created
And depth of life profound.
The highlands' sun that played there
On fjord and mountain snow
So wide a vision made there
As one could wish to know.
When _he_ to Ting repairing
Would plead the peasant's right,
Each word a beam was bearing.
To make our young day bright.
It came like ancient story
Or long-lost song's refrain;
What crowned our past with glory
It made our present gain.
Though in his boat a seaman,
A farmer in his field,
Ne'er finer thoughts did freeman
In royal council wield.
His years bear witness ready
That we shall yet achieve
Our people's self-rule steady,
He taught us to believe.
When weary, worn, and aged,
His faith was ever strong;
The people's war he wagèd
For victory erelong.
Beneath the banner dying,
He would not yet give o'er,
And him Valkyries flying
Home to Valhalla bore.
From wintry night and bitter
He was with stately tread
In Saga's hall a-glitter
Before the high-sear led.
Old heroes proud or merry
Rising to greet him went,
But first of all King Sverre,
From whom was his descent.
+
ANTON MARTIN SCHWEIGAARD
(IN THE CHURCH AFTER THE FUNERAL ORATION)
(See Note 47)
Give us, God, to Thee now turning,
Fullness of joy, tears full and burning,
Of will the full refining fire!
Hear our prayer o'er his inurning:
His will was _one_, the whole discerning,
His whole soul would to it aspire.
Yes; give us yet again,
With power to lead, great men,--
Power in counsel our folk to lead,
Our folk in deed,
Our folk in gladness and in need!
Thou, O God, our want preventest;
To raise the temple _him_ Thou lentest,
A spirit bright and pure and great.
When Thou from time to call him meantest,
Her tender soul to him Thou sentest
Who went before to heaven's gate.
When Thou didst set him free,
An epoch ceased to be.
Men then marveled, the while they said:
"Living and dead,
O'er all our land he beauty spread."
Help us, God, to wiser waring,
When to our land Thou light art bearing,
That we Thy dayspring then may know.
God, our future Thou'rt preparing,
Oh, give us longing, honor's daring,
That we the great may not forego!
Thou sentest many out,--
Cease not, our God, nor doubt!
Let us follow Thy way, Thy call,
Men, words, and all!
Thy mercies shall our North enwall!
+
TO AASMUND OLAFSEN VINJE
(SUNG AT HIS WIFE'S GRAVE)
(See Note 48)
Your house to guests has shelter lent,
While you with pen were seated.
In silent quest they came and went,
You saw them not, nor greeted.
But when now they
Were gone away,
Your babe without a mother lay,
And you had lost your helpmate.
The home you built but yesterday
In death to-day is sinking,
And you stand sick and worn and gray
On ruins of your thinking.
Your way lay bare
Since child you were,
The shelter that you first could share
Was this that now is shattered.
But know, the guests that to you came
In sorrow's waste will meet you;
Though shy you shrink, they still will claim
The right with love to treat you.
For where you go
To you they show
The world in radiant light aglow
Of great and wondrous visions.
What once you saw, now passing o'er,
Will but be made the clearer;
It is the far eternal shore,
That on your way draws nearer.
Your poet-sight
Will see in light
All that the clouds have wrapped in night;--
Great doubts will find an answer.
And later when you leave again
The waste of woe thought-pregnant,
Whom you have met shall teach us then.
Your pen in power regnant.
From sorrow's weal
With purer zeal,
Inspiring light, and pain's appeal
Shall shine your wondrous visions.
GOOD CHEER
(1870)
(See Note 49)
So let these songs their story tell
To all who in the Northland dwell,
Since many friends request it.
(That Finland's folk with them belong
In the wide realm of Northern song,
I grateful must attest it.)
I send these songs--and now I find
Most of them have riot what my mind
Has deepest borne and favored:
Some are too hasty, some too brief,
Some, long in stock, have come to grief,
Some with raw youth are flavored.
I lived far more than e'er I sang;
Thought, ire, and mirth unceasing rang
Around me, where I guested;
To be where loud life's battles call
For me was well-nigh more than all
My pen on page arrested.
What's true and strong has growing-room,
And will perhaps eternal bloom,
Without black ink's salvation,
And he will be, who least it planned,
But in life's surging dared to stand,
The best bard for his nation.
I heard once of a Spanish feast:
Within the ring a rustic beast,
A horse, to fight was fated;
In came a tiger from his cage,
Who walked about, his foe to gauge,
And crouching down, then waited.
The people clapped and laughed and cheered,
The tiger sprang, the horse upreared,
But none could see him bleeding;
The tiger tumbling shrinks and backs
Before the horse's rustic whacks,
Lies on his head naught heeding.
Then men and women hooted, hissed,
With glaring eyes and clenchèd fist
Out o'er the balcony bending;
With shouts the tiger's heart they tease,
Their thirst for blood soon to appease,
To onset new him sending.
The people clapped and laughed and cheered
The tiger sprang, the horse upreared;
No blood to see was given,
For fortune held the horse too dear,
To him the tiger could not near,
In flying curves hoof-driven.
To say who won I will not try;
For lo, this rustic horse am I,
And on the conflict's going;--
The city, though, where it occurs,
And where it cheers and laughter stirs,
Is known without my showing.
I fight, but have no hate or spite,
From what I love draw gladness bright,
My right to wrath reserving.
It is my blood, my soul, that goes
In every line of all my blows,
And guides their course unswerving.
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.
But the "boss" who ruled there with his logical rod,
"Old Heltberg" himself, was of all the most odd!
In his jacket of dog's skin and fur-boots stout
He waged a hard war with his asthma and gout.
No fur-cap could hide from us his forehead imperious,
His classical features, his eye's power mysterious.
Now erect in his might and now bowed by his pain,
Strong thoughts he threw out, and he threw not in vain.
If the suffering grew keener and again it was faced
By the will in his soul, and his body he braced
Against onset after onset, then his eyes were flaming
And his hands were clenched hard, as if deep were his shaming
That he seemed to have yielded! Oh, then we were sharing
Amazed all the grandeur of conflict, and bearing
Home with us a symbol of the storms of that age,
When "Wergeland's wild hunt" o'er our country could rage!
There was power in the men who took part in that play,
There was will in the power that then broke its way.
Now alone he was left, forgotten in his corner:--
But in deeds was a hero,--let none dare to be his scorner!
He freed thought from the fetters that the schools inherit,
Independent in teaching, he led by the spirit;
Personality unique: for with manner anarchic
He carved up the text; and absolute-monarchic
Was his wrath at mistakes; but soon it subsided,
Or, controlled, into noblest pathos was guided,
Which oft turned in recoil into self-irony
And a downpour of wit letting no one go free.--
So he governed his "horde," so we went through the country,
The fair land of the classics, that we harried with effront'ry!
How Cicero, Sallust, and Virgil stood in fear
On the forum, in the temple, when we ravaging drew near!
'T was again. the Goths' invasion to the ruin of Rome,
It was Thor's and Odin's spirit over Jupiter's home,
--And the old man's "grammar" was a dwarf-forged hammer,
When he swung it and smote with sparks, flames, and clamor.
The herd of "barbarians" he thus headed on their way
Had no purpose to settle and just there to stay.
"Non-Latins" they remained, by no alien thought enslaved,
And found their true selves, as the foreign foes they braved.
In conquering the language we learned the laws of thought,
And following him, his fine longing we caught
For wanderings and wonders, all the conqueror's zeal,
To win unknown lands and their mysteries reveal.
Each lesson seemed a vision that henceforth was ours,
Inspiring each youth's individual powers.
His pictures made pregnant our creative desire,
His wit was our testing in an ordeal of fire,
His wisdom was our balance, to weigh things great and small,
His pathos told of passions, burning, but held in thrall,
Oft the stricken hero scarce his tedious toil could brook,
He wished to go and write, though it were but a single book,
To show a _little_ what he was, and show it to the world:
He loosed his cable daily, but ne'er his sails unfurled.
His "grammar" was not printed! And he passed from mortal ken
To where the laws of thought are not written with a pen.
His "grammar" was not printed! But the life that it had,
In ink's prolonging power did not need to be clad.
It lived in his soul, so mighty, so warm,
That a thousand books' life seems but poor empty form.
It lives in a host of independent men,
To whose thought he gave life and who give it again
In the school, at the bar, in the church, and Storting's hall,
In poetry and art,--whose deeds and lifework all
Have proved to be the freer and the broader in their might,
Because Heltberg had given their youth higher flight.
FOR THE WOUNDED
(1871)
(See Note 51)
A still procession goes
Amid the battle's booming,
Its arm the red cross shows;
It prays in many forms of speech,
And, bending o'er the fallen,
Brings peace and home to each.
Not only is it found
Where bleed the wounds of battle,
But all the world around.
It is the love the whole world feels
In noble hearts and tender,
While gentle pity kneels;--
It is all labor's dread
Of war's mad waste and murder,
Praying that peace may spread;
It is all sufferers who heed
The sighing of a brother,
And know his sorrow's need;--
It is each groan of pain
Heard from the sick and wounded,
'T is Christian prayer humane;
It is their cry who lonely grope,
'T is the oppressed man's moaning,
The dying breath of hope;--
This rainbow-bridge of prayers
Up through the world's wild tempest
In light of Christ's faith bears:
That love and loving deeds
May conquer strife and passion;
For thus His promise reads.
LANDFALL
(See Note 52)
And that was Olaf Trygvason,
Going o'er the North Sea grim,
Straight for his home and kingdom steering,
Where none awaited him.
Now the first mountains tower;
Are they walls, on the ocean that lower?
And that was Olaf Trygvason,
Fast the land seemed locked at first,
All of his youthful, kingly longings
Doomed on the cliffs to burst,--
Until a skald discovered
Shining domes in the cloud-mists, that hovered.
And that was Olaf Trygvason,
Seemed to see before his eyes
Mottled and gray some timeless temple
Lifting white domes to the skies.
Sorely he longed to win it,
Stand and hallow his young faith within it.
TO HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
(AT A SUMMER-FÊTE FOR HIM IN CHRISTIANIA, 1871)
(See Note 53)
We welcome you this wondrous summer-day,
When childhood's dreams on earth are streaming,
To bloom and sing, to brighten and to pale;
A fairy-tale,
A fairy-tale, our Northland all is seeming,
And holds you in its arms a festal space
With grateful glee and whisperings face to face.
Th' angelic noise,
Sweet strains of children's joys,
Bears you a moment to that home
Whence all our dreams, whence all our dreams have come.
We welcome you! Our nation all is young,
Still in that age of dreams enthralling,
When greatest things in fairy-tales are nursed,
And he is first,
And he is first, who hears his Lord's high calling.
Of childhood's longings you the meaning know,
And to the North a goal of greatness show.
Your fantasy
Has just that path made free,
Where, past the small things that you hate,
We yet shall find, we yet shall find the great.
TO STANG
(1871)
(See Note 54)
May Seventeenth in Eidsvold's church united,
To hallow after fifty years the day
When they who there our charter free indited,
Together for our land were met to pray,--
We both were there with thanks to those great men,
With thanks to God, who to our people then
In days of danger courage gave unbounded.
And when so mighty through the church now sounded
"Praise ye the Lord!" lifting our pallid prayer
To fellowship with all her sons, our brothers,
I saw you, child-like, weep in secret there
Upon the breast we love, our common mother's.
Then I remembered that from boyhood's hour
With all your strength to serve her you have striven,
Your youthful fire, your counsel cool have given,
And till it waned, your manhood's wealth of power.
With blessing then and praise of you I thought
In thankful prayer, as one of those who fought
To shield our land from storms of fate's hard weather,
Till 'neath the roof in peace we sat together.
Of you I thought;--but so think few and fewer.
Your manhood's fame ere you yourself has crumbled,
And you, alas, will not find justice truer,
Till you and yours one day have fallen, humbled.
For see, the roads you drew o'er hill and plain
For all our people's onward-pressing longing,
You dare not travel with the joyous train,
That greater grows while towards its future thronging.
You knew not what it was your labor wrought,
When steam and powder, bursting every barrier,
Gave new-born cravings each its speedy carrier
And to the people's spirit power brought.
The new day's work, as 't were the tempest's welter,
In din about you seemed a dream, a fable,
And with your like you built in fear a shelter
From soul-unrest, a looming tower of Babel.
While now you wait for the impending fight,
With gentle eye and stately head all hoary,
And o'er the mountains gleams the morning's glory,--
Your foes half hid amid the mists of night,--
As from an outpost in the wooded wild,
These words I send, of peace a token mild.
You fear the people? 'Tis your own that rally,
And like the fog arisen from the valley.
You think them rebels, void of sense and oneness?
Yes, spring's full floods obey no rule precise;
Storm-squalls and slush render the roads less nice,
The snow's pure white is partly soiled to dunness.
But spring is born! The man of genius free,
Prophetic, heeds its holy harmony;
For genius shares the soul of what shall be.
This you have not and never had an hour,
And so you shrink before the people's power.
You were a foreman with the gift of leading,
When pioneers cleared up a pathless tract;
Your lucid thinking and your gracious tact
Oft helped them over obstacles impeding.
But what new growths the ancient fields have filled,
From western seed to feed our land's wants tilled,
And what new light shines through your window-pane,
Longing for truth beneath religion's reign,
And what new things but whispering we say,--
And what foretells the dawning reckoning-day,--
You fail to understand and find but madness
In our young nation's fairest growth and gladness.
You answer: Poet's deeming is but dreaming,
And in the statesman's art most unbeseeming.
I answer: None has might men's life to sway,
If impotent the worth of dreams to weigh.
From cravings, powers that seek their form, ascending,
They fill the air; their right to be defending,
Till all men wakened to one goal are tending.
His nation's dreams are all the statesman's life,
Create his might, direct his aim in strife,
And if he this forgets, the next dreams blooming
Bring forth another, unto death him dooming.
The tempest-clouds that mount afresh and thicken
Cannot so dense before the morn's light hover
That we may not through cloud-rifts clear discover
Great thoughts that new-born victories shall quicken.
Such thoughts are radiant over me to-day,
And to my heart the warmer blood is streaming,
And all we live for, all that we are dreaming,
Its summons sends and strengthens for the fray.
The war-horns soon beneath the woods shall bray,
Through dewy night th' assailing columns dash,
Amid the sudden gleams of shot and slash
The fog dissolve before our new-born day.
Soon, though you threaten, will the heights be taken
For future ages, and our nation's soul
Can thence o'erlook the land in might unshaken,
With even hand and right to rule the whole.
It soon shall roll war's billows on to battle,
While from the clouds the fathers' weapons rattle!
O aged man, look round you where you stand,
For soon you have against you all our land.
But when you fall defeated on the field,
Then shall we say by your inverted shield:
He stood against us, since he knew not better,
A noble knight and never honor's debtor.
ON A WIFE'S DEATH
(See Note 55)
With death's dark eye acquainted she had been made ere this,
When to her son, her first-born, she gave the farewell kiss,
And when afar she hastened beside her mother's bed,
It followed all her faring with warning fraught and dread;
It filled her with foreboding when standing by the bier:
More sheaves to gather hopeth the harvester austere.
So soon she saw her husband, that man of strength, succumb,
She said with sorrow stricken: « I knew that it would come!"
She thought that he was chosen by God from earth to go,
Would check, her hands upthrusting, the harsh behest of woe;
And with her slender body, too weak for such a strife,
Would ward her gallant consort,--and gave for him her life.
She smiled, serene and blissful, as death's dark eye she braved;
Her sacrifice was given, her heart's proud hero saved.
Our love and admiration lifted a starry dome
Of happiness above her in life's last hour of gloam,
And snow-white pure she passed then to her eternal home.
Such tender love and holy to heaven's bounds can bear
The souls that it embraces in sacrifice and prayer.
THE BIER OF PRECENTOR A. REITAN
(1872)
(See Note 56)
With smiles his soft eyes ever gleamed,
When God and country thinking;
With endless joy, his soul, it seemed,
Faith, fatherland, was linking.
His word, his song,
Like springs flowed strong;
They fruitful made the valley long,
And quickened all there drinking.
Poor people and poor homes among
In wintry region saddest,
In Sunday's choir he always sung,
Of all the world the gladdest:
"The axis stout
It turns about,
Falls not the poorest home without,
For thus, O God, Thou badest."
With sickness came a heavy year
And put to proof his singing,
While helpless children standing near
His trust to test were bringing.
But glad the more,
As soft notes soar
When winds o'er hidden harp-strings pour,
His song his soul was winging.
His life foretold us that erelong
With faith in God unshaken
Shall all our nation stand in song,
And church, home, school, awaken,
In Norway's song,
In gladness' song,
In glory of the Lord's own song,
From life's low squalor taken.
Fair fatherland, do not forget,
The children of his bower!
He, poor as is the rosebush, yet
Gave gladness till death's hour--
With failure's smart
Let not depart
From this thy soil so glad a heart,--
His garden, let it flower!