With grateful remembrance that our great artist, ardently loving
his native land, saw with clear, penetrating vision the influence
of art on the development of a people,—especially of an
independent dramatic art springing up in its midst,—with earnest
and heartfelt thanks, because we owe to his inspiring energy and
example the presence of that art in his own native city,
recognizing that his name will be always connected with its
history,—in the name of Bergen’s National Theatre, I lay this
wreath upon his grave.
“After the coffin had been put in the grave, and the relatives had gone
away, there was paid a last tribute to Ole Bull,—a tribute more touching
and of more worth than the king’s message, the gold crown, all the
orders, and the flags of the world at half–mast, meaning more love than
the pine–strewn streets of the silent city, and the tears on its
people’s faces; a tribute from poor peasants, who had come in from the
country far and near, men who knew Ole Bull’s music by heart,—who, in
their lonely, poverty–stricken huts had been proud of the man who had
played their ‘Gamle Norge’ before the kings of the earth. These men were
there by hundreds, each bringing a green bough, or a fern, or a flower;
they waited humbly till all others had left the grave, then crowded up,
and threw in, each man, the only token he had been rich enough to bring.
The grave was filled to the brim. And it is not irreverent to say, that
to Ole Bull, in heaven, there could come no gladder memory of earth than
that the last honors paid him there were wild leaves and flowers of
Norway, laid on his body by the loving hands of Norway peasants.”
* * * * *
“Now long that instrument has ceased to sound,
Now long that gracious form in earth hath lain,
Tended by nature only, and unwound
Are all those mingled threads of love and pain;
So let us weep, and bend
Our heads, and wait the end,
Knowing that God creates not thus in vain.”