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

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, suc-

cumb,

She said with sorrow stricken: "I knew that it would

come!"

AT THE BIER OF PRECENTOR A. REITAN 163 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.

AT THE BIER OF PRECENTOR A. REITAN

(1872)

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.

...