Poems and Songs by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (classic books for 11 year olds TXT) 📖

it fell, and cold.
Never did patrimony
Bear fruitage so many fold.

Heed this, Norwegian peasant,
Heed it, you townsman, too!
That fruit of love's seed may be present,
Our thanks must fall fresh as dew.

"Here your Hamar-made matches!"
My thanks kindle fast. And oh!
This song at your heart-strings catches,
That kindling your thanks may glow.

The matches hold them in hiding,--
Scratching one you will find
The light with a warmth abiding
Carries them to his mind.

"Here your Hamar-made matches!"
Only to strike one here,
Our thanks far-away dispatches,
With peace his fair home to cheer.

His matches in thousands of houses,
In great and in small as well!--
The light that thanksgiving arouses
Shall scatter the darkness fell.

His matches in thousands of houses!--
Some eve from his factory
He'll see how thanksgiving arouses
The land, and its love flames free.

He'll see in the eyes so tender,
Through gleams that his matches woke,
The thanks that his nation would render,
His glistening wreath of oak,--

He'll feel that Norway with double
The warmth of other lands glows;
The harvest must more be than trouble,
When faith in its future grows.

"Here your Hamar-made matches!"
No phosphorus-poison more!
The bearer of light up-catches
The work of the school before:--

From home all the poison taking,
Hastening the light's advance,
Longings to warm light waking,
That lay there and had no chance.



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)

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