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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=351444" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>To Johan Sverdrup</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">When now my song selects and praises<br>Your forceful name, think not it raises<br>The rallying-flag for battle near;<br>The street-fight shall not reach us here.<br>If sacred poetry's fair hill<br>Lies open to assassination,-<br>Is <br>this<br>the newer revelation,<br>Then I withdraw and hold me still.<br>Then I the words of Einar borrow,<br>When southern change of kings brought sorrow,<br>And Harald's hosts their ravage spread:<br>I follow rather Magnus dead<br>Than Harald living thus,-and then<br>I sail away with ships and men.<br>Nor therefore do I lift anew<br>The flag of song just now for you,<br>Because my spirit's deepest yearning<br>To you for new light now is turning.<br>No, where the <br>greatest<br>questions started,<br>Just there it is our ways were parted-<br>From where the deepest thought can reach,<br>To plan and goal of daily speech.<br>My childhood's faith unshaken stands,<br>And thence our equal rights deriving,<br>I for a people free am striving<br>And brotherhood in kindred lands.<br>Though both of us are <br>Christian<br>men,<br>So wide a gulf between us lies;<br>Though both are true <br>Norwegian<br>men,<br>We Norway see with different eyes.<br>If but to-day we victory gain,<br>We must to-morrow fight amain.<br>But now I honor you in singing,<br>Because what ought just now to be<br>With strongest will you clearly see,<br>And foremost to the fight are springing.<br>When sinks the land 'neath heavy fogs<br>And no fair prospect cheers the eye,<br>The thickening air our breathing clogs,<br>Yes, all things dull in torpor lie,-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then<br>mounts your mind with freest motion,<br>Its thunder-wings the mist-banks driving,<br>Its lightning-talons cloud-walls riving,<br>Till sunlight spreads o'er land and ocean.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You<br>are the freshening shower clean<br>Upon our sluggish day's routine.<br>You are the salt sea-current poured<br>Into each close and sultry fjord.<br>Your speech a mine-shaft is, deep-going<br>To where the veins of ore are showing.<br>And by your flashing eyes far-sighted<br>The past is for our future lighted.<br>So long as Sverre's sword you wield,<br>So long as you our hosts are heading,<br>We know we'll win on every field;<br>Foes flee, your battle trumpet dreading.<br>We see their struggling ranks soon rifted,<br>We see them set so many a snare:<br>Your head unharmed in thought's pure air<br>Above the waves of war is lifted.<br>We love you for this courage good,<br>That e'er <br>before<br>the banner stood,<br>We love the strength you boldly stored<br>In your self-forged and tempered sword.<br>Your vigilance we love and prize,<br>That sickness, slander, loss defies,<br>We love you, that at duty's call<br>You gave your peace, your future, all,<br>We love you still-hate cannot cleave!-<br>Because you dared in us believe.<br>How can they hope that backward here<br>Our land shall go? No, year by year,<br>Forward in freedom and in song,<br>Forward the truly Norse disclosing.<br>What might can now avail, opposing<br>The travail of the centuries long?<br>People and power no more divided;<br>In peace to save or war to kill,<br>Our freedom with <br>one<br>guard provided,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One<br>nation only and <br>one<br>will.<br>The spirit of our nation's morn,<br>The unity of free gods dreaming,<br>And all things great to be great deeming,<br>Forever must the spurious scorn.<br>The spirit that impelled the viking<br>'Gainst kingly power for freedom striking,-<br>That, threatened, sailed to Iceland strong<br>With hero-fame and hero-song,<br>And further on through all the ages,-<br>That spirit never dwells in cages.<br>The spirit that at Hjörung broke<br>For thousand years the foreign yoke,<br>By might of king ne'er made to cower,<br>Defying e'en the papal power,-<br>The spirit that, to weakness worn,<br>Held free our soil with rights unshorn,<br>Held free, with tongue and hand combined,<br>'Gainst foreign host and foreign mind,-<br>By which our Holberg's wit was whetted,<br>And Wessel's sword and Wessel's pen,<br>And to whose silent forge indebted<br>The thoughts that armed our Eidsvold-men,-<br>The spirit that in faith so high<br>Through Odin could to God draw nigh,<br>As bridge the myth of Balder threw,<br>And almost found the free way new<br>To truth's fair home in radiant Gimle,<br>When this was closed and warded grimly<br>By monkish lies and papal speech,-<br>That threw a second bridge to reach<br>On freedom's lightly soaring arches<br>To heights whereon the free soul marches,-<br>So, when for Luther blood was shed,<br>The North but razed a fence instead,<br>-The spirit that, when men were deeming<br>True faith in all the world were dead,<br>Brun, Hauge, and their lineage spread,<br>From soul-springs in our nation streaming,-<br>Though pietism's fog now thickens,<br>Still guards the altar lights and quickens;-<br>Can <br>this<br>they make the fashion better,<br>By modern bishop-synod's letter?<br>Is <br>this<br>by politics provided,<br>When into 'Chambers' 't is divided?<br>Can <br>this<br>into a box be juggled<br>And o'er the boundary be smuggled?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And that just now when beacons lighted<br>On all the mountain-tops are sighted,<br>And when our folk-high-school's young day<br>The Norse heart kindles with its ray,<br>Renewing mem'ries, courage bringing,<br>While they are hearing, trusting, singing;-<br>Just when the deep in billows surges,<br>Responsive to the tempest's might,<br>And over it the Northern Light<br>Of Youth's refulgent hope emerges;-<br>Just when the spirit everywhere,<br>While walls lie low as trumpets blare,<br>Is breaking from the ancient forms,<br>And will of youth the heights now storms.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A battle-age,-and we are in it!<br>The greatest thing on earth: to be<br>Where powers that are bursting free,<br>Self-shaping seek their place and win it;-<br>Our fusing passion all to give,<br>To cast the statue that shall live,<br>To press the mold of our own form<br>On what shall be the future's norm,<br>Into the age's soul thus breathed<br>The spirit God to us bequeathed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'T was this that now I wished to say<br>To you, who late and early, aye<br>Within time's workshop great are going,<br>What is, what shall be, ever knowing;-<br>To you, who all our people's might<br>Have roused for freedom new to fight;-<br>To whom our people gave this power,<br>And sorrow, its eternal dower.</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=351444" data-title="To Johan Sverdrup de Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson" data-description="When now my song selects and praises
Your forceful name, think not it raises
The rallying-flag for battle near;
The street-fight shall not reach us here.
If sacred poetry's fair hill
Lies open to assassination,-
Is 
this
the newer revelation,
Then..."></div>
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