Then mounts your mind with freest motion,
Its thunder-wings the mist-banks driving,
Its lightning-talons cloud-walls riving,
Till sunlight spreads o'er land and ocean.
You are the freshening shower clean
Upon our sluggish day's routine.
You are the salt sea-current poured
Into each close and sultry fjord.
Your speech a mine-shaft is, deep-going
To where the veins of ore are showing.
And by your flashing eyes far-sighted
The past is for our future lighted.
So long as Sverre's sword you wield,
So long as you our hosts are heading,
We know we'll win on every field;
Foes flee, your battle trumpet dreading.
We see their struggling ranks soon rifted,
We see them set so many a snare:
Your head unharmed in thought's pure air
Above the waves of war is lifted.
We love you for this courage good,
That e'er before the banner stood,
We love the strength you boldly stored
In your self-forged and tempered sword.
Your vigilance we love and prize,
That sickness, slander, loss defies,
We love you, that at duty's call
You gave your peace, your future, all,
you still hate cannot cleave!Because you dared in us believe.
How can they hope that backward here
Our land shall go? No, year by year,
Forward in freedom and in song,
Forward the truly Norse disclosing.
What might can now avail, opposing
The travail of the centuries long?
People and power no more divided;
In peace to save or war to kill,
Our freedom with one guard provided,
One nation only and one will.
The spirit of our nation's morn,
The unity of free gods dreaming,
And all things great to be great deeming,
Forever must the spurious scorn.
The spirit that impelled the viking
'Gainst kingly power for freedom striking,—
That, threatened, sailed to Iceland strong
With hero-fame and hero-song,
And further on through all the ages,—
That spirit never dwells in cages.
The spirit that at Hjörung broke
For thousand years the foreign yoke,
By might of king ne'er made to cower,
Defying e'en the papal power,—
The spirit that, to weakness worn,
Held free our soil with rights unshorn,
Held free, with tongue and hand combined,
'Gainst foreign host and foreign mind,-
By which our Holberg's wit was whetted,
And Wessel's sword and Wessel's pen,
And to whose silent forge indebted
The thoughts that armed our Eidsvold-men,—
The spirit that in faith so high
Through Odin could to God draw nigh,
As bridge the myth of Balder threw,
And almost found the free way new
To truth's fair home in radiant Gimle,
When this was closed and warded grimly
By monkish lies and papal speech,—
That threw a second bridge to reach
On freedom's lightly soaring arches
To heights whereon the free soul marches,
So, when for Luther blood was shed,
The North but razed a fence instead,
-The spirit that, when men were deeming
True faith in all the world were dead,
Brun, Hauge, and their lineage spread,
From soul-springs in our nation streaming,—
Though pietism's fog now thickens,
Still guards the altar lights and quickens;—
Can this they make the fashion better,
By modern bishop-synod's letter?
Is this by politics provided,
When into "Chambers" 't is divided?
Can this into a box be juggled
And o'er the boundary be smuggled?
And that just now when beacons lighted On all the mountain-tops are sighted, And when our folk-high-school's young day The Norse heart kindles with its ray, Renewing mem'ries, courage bringing, While they are hearing, trusting, singing;Just when the deep in billows surges, Responsive to the tempest's might, And over it the Northern Light Of Youth's refulgent hope emerges;Just when the spirit everywhere, While walls lie low as trumpets blare, Is breaking from the ancient forms, And will of youth the heights now storms.
The greatest thing on earth: to be
Where powers that are bursting free,
Self-shaping seek their place and win it;-
Our fusing passion all to give,
To cast the statue that shall live,
press the mold of our own form On what shall be the future's norm, Into the age's soul thus breathed The spirit God to us bequeathed.
'T was this that now I wished to say
To you, who late and early, aye
Within time's workshop great are going,
What is, what shall be, ever knowing;-
To you, who all our people's might
Have roused for freedom new to fight;-
To whom our people gave this power,-
And sorrow, its eternal dower.
THE CHILD IN OUR SOUL
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
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
's name he stammers yet once more,
The rue of tears now paying
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