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TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
IN THE ORIGINAL METERS
BY
ARTHUR HUBBELL PALMER
Professor of the German Language and Literature
In Yale University
New York
The American-Scandinavian Foundation
London: Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
1915
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.
A life seventy-seven years long and but two hundred pages oflyrical production, more than half of which was written in abouta dozen years! The seeming disproportion is explained by thelines just quoted from the poem Good Cheer, with which Björnsonconcluded the first edition of his Poems and Songs. Alongsideof these stanzas, in which the cause of his popularity and powerfulinfluence is also unconsciously revealed, may well be placed thefollowing one from The Poet, which discloses to us the largerconception of the mission that Björnson himself in all his workand life, no less than in his lyrics, so finely fulfilled:
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.
"The best bard for his nation" is he who "does the prophet'sdeeds," who "rallies now the present's hosts," and "frees,—by right eternal." Poet and prophet Björnson was, but morethan all else the leader of the Norwegian people, "where loudlife's battles call," through conflict unto liberation and growth.It has been said that twice in the nineteenth century the nationalsoul of Norway embodied itself in individual men,—during thefirst half in Henrik Wergeland and during the second half inBjörnstjerne Björnson. True as this is of the former, it isstill more true of the latter, for the history of Norway showsthat the soul of its people expresses itself best through willand action. Björnson throughout all his life willed and wroughtso much for his country, that he could give relatively littletime and power to lyrical self-expression.
But Björnson strikingly represented the past of Norway as wellas his contemporary age. He was a modern blending of the heroicchieftain and the gifted skald of ancient times. He was the firstleader of his country in a period when the battles of the spiriton the fields of politics and economics, ethics, and estheticswere the only form of conflict,—a leader evoking, developing,and guiding the powers of his nation into fuller and higher life.In his many-sidedness Björnson was also in his time the firstskald of his people, almost equally endowed with genius as anarrative, a dramatic, and a lyric poet; with talents scarcelyless remarkable as an orator, a theater-director, a journalistictribune of the pe