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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=351432" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Pure Norwegian Flag</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I<br>Tri-colored flag, and pure,<br>Thou art our hard-fought cause secure;<br>Thor's hammer-mark of might<br>Thou bearest blue in Christian white,<br>And all our hearts' red blood<br>To thee streams its full flood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou liftest us high when life's sternest,<br>Exultant, thou oceanward turnest;<br>Thy colors of freedom are earnest<br>That spirit and body shall never know dearth.-<br>Fare forth o'er the earth!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II<br>'The pure flag is but pure folly,'<br>You 'wise' men maintain for true.<br>But the flag is the truth poetic,<br>The folly is found in you.<br>In poetry upward soaring,<br>The nation's immortal soul<br>With hands invisible carries<br>The flag toward the future goal.<br>That soul's every toil and trial,<br>That soul's every triumph sublime,<br>Are sounding in songs immortal,-<br>To their music the flag beats time.<br>We bear it along surrounded<br>By mem'ry's melodious choir,<br>By mild and whispering voices,<br>By will and stormy desire.<br>It gives not to others guidance,<br>Can not a Swedish word say;<br>It never can flaunt allurement:-<br>Clear the foreign colors away!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III<br>The sins and deceits of our nation<br>Possess in the flag no right;<br>The flag is the high ideal<br>In honor's immortal light.<br>The best of our past achievements,<br>The best of our present prayers,<br>It takes in its folds from the fathers<br>And bears to the sons and heirs;<br>Bears it all pure and artless,<br>By tokens that tempt us unmarred,<br>Is for our will's young manhood<br>Leader as well as guard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV<br>They say: 'As by rings of betrothal<br>We are by the flag affied!'<br>But Norway is <br>not<br>betrothèd,<br>She <br>is<br>no one's promised bride.<br>She shares her abode with no one,<br>Her bed and her board to none yields,<br>Her will is her worthy bridegroom,<br>Herself rules her sea, her fields.<br>Our brother to eastward honors<br>This independence of youth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He<br>knows well that by it only<br>Our wreath can be won in truth.<br>When we from the flag are taking<br>His colors, <br>he<br>knows 't is no whim,<br>But merely because we are holding<br>Our honor higher than him.<br>And none who himself has honor<br>Will seek him a different friend;<br>Our life we can for him offer,<br>But naught of our flag can lend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V<br>TO SWEDEN<br>Respectful I seek a hearing,<br>With trust in your temper sane,<br>And plead now our cause before you<br>In words that are calm and plain:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If, Sweden, <br>you<br>were the smaller,<br>Were young your freedom's renown,<br>Had <br>your<br>flag a mark of union<br>That pressed you still farther down<br>By saying that you, as little,<br>Were set at the greater's board<br>(For this is the mark's real meaning,<br>By no one on earth ignored),<br>Yes, if it were you,-and your freedom<br>Not hallowed by age, but young,<br>And a century's want and weakness<br>Still heavy in memory hung,<br>The soul of your nation harrowed<br>By old injustice and need,<br>By luckless labor and longing,<br>-And did you its meaning heed;<br>Yes, if it were you, whose duty<br>To teach your people were tried,<br>To honor their new-born freedom,<br>To find in their flag their guide:<br>Would longer you suffer it sundered,<br>Leave foreign a single field?<br>Would you not claim it unplundered,<br>Your independence to shield?<br>Would not to yourself you say then:<br>'If one has high lineage long,<br>If greater his colors' glory,<br>The more alluring his song.<br>Oh, tempt not him who from trouble<br>Is rising with new found might;<br>With pure marks direct him, rather,<br>To honor's exalted height.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus <br>you<br>would speak, elder hero,<br>If <br>you<br>in <br>our<br>home abode;<br>Your wont is the way of honor,<br>You fare on the forward road.<br>From eighteen hundred and fourteen,<br>And down to the latest day,<br>So oft for our independence<br>We stood like the stag at bay,<br>Brave men have risen among you,<br>And scorning the strife that swelled<br>Have talked for our cause high-minded,<br>Like Torgny to them of eld.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI<br>ANSWER TO THE AGED RIDDERSTAD</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You say, it is 'knightly duty,'<br>The fight for the flag to share,-<br>I hold you full high in honor,<br>But-<br>that<br>is our own affair!<br>For just because we encounter<br>The storm-blasts of slander stark,<br>It's 'knightly duty' to free now<br>The flag from the marring mark.<br>The 'parity' that mark preaches<br>Flies false over all the seas;<br>A pan-Scandinavian Sweden<br>Can never our nation please.<br>From 'knightly duty' the smaller<br>Must say: I am not a part;<br>The mark of my freedom and honor<br>Is whole for my mind and heart.<br>From 'knightly duty' the greater<br>Must say: A falsehood's fair sign<br>Can give me no special honor,<br>No longer shall it be mine.<br>For both it is 'knightly duty,'<br>With flags that are pure, to be<br>A warring world's bright example<br>Of peoples at peace, proud and free.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Bj%C3%B8rnstjerne+Bj%C3%B8rnson">Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=351432" data-title="The Pure Norwegian Flag de Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson" data-description="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,
Exulta..."></div>
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