Poems and Songs | Page 2

estimated, to ten
thousand book-pages), a letter-writer, and a conversationalist.
If, furthermore, we take into account also Björnson's labors and
achievements in the domain of action more narrowly considered, it is
no wonder that his Poems and Songs make only a small volume.

Examining the book more closely, we find that three-quarters of its
pages were written before the year 1875, so that the lyrical output, here
published, of the thirty-four years thereafter amounts to but fifty pages.
From the year 1874 on in Björnson's life the chieftain supplanted the
skald, so far as lyrical
utterance was concerned. He was leading his
nation in thought and action on the fields of theology and religion, of
politics, economics, and social reform; he was tireless in making
speeches, in writing letters and newspaper articles; his poetic genius
flowed out copiously in the dramatic and epic channels of his numerous
modern plays, novels, and stories.
That soon after 1874 Björnson passed through a crisis in his personal
thought and inner life was probably, in view of the sufficient
explanation suggested above, without influence in lessening his
production of short poems. This crisis was in his religious beliefs. His
father was a clergyman in the Lutheran State Church, and from his
home in western Norway Björnson brought with him to Christiania in
1850 fervent Christian faith of the older orthodox sort. Here his
somewhat somber religion was soon made brighter and more tender by
the adoption of Grundtvig's teachings, and until past mid-life he
remained a sincere Christian in the fullest sense, as is repeatedly shown
in his lyrics. But in the years just before 1877 study of modern science
and philosophy, of the history of the Church and dogma, led him to
become an evolutionist, an agnostic theist. Nevertheless, he ever
practiced the Christian art of life, as he tried to realize his ideals of truth,
justice, and love of humanity. This large and simple Christian art of life,
in distinction from the dogmas of the Church, he early sung in lines
which sound no less true to the keynote of his later years:
Love thy neighbor, to Christ be leal!
Crush him never with iron-heel,
Though in the dust he's lying!
All the living responsive await
Love
with power to recreate,
Needing alone the trying.
II

The quantity, then, of Björnson's short poems is small. Their intrinsic
worth is great. Their influence in Norway has been broad and deep,
they are known and loved by all. If lyrical means only melodious,
"singable," they possess high poetic value and distinction. In a unique
degree they have inspired composers of music to pour out their strains.
When a Scandinavian reads Björnson's poems, his ears ring with the
familiar melodies into which they have almost sung themselves.
Here is not the place for technical analysis of the external poetic forms.
A cursory inspection will show that Björnson's are wonderfully varied,
and that the same form is seldom, if ever, precisely duplicated. In
rhythm and alliteration, rhyme sequence and the grouping of lines into
stanzas, the form in each case seems to be determined by the content,
naturally, spontaneously. Yet for one who has intimately studied these
verses until his mind and heart vibrate responsively, the words of all
have an indefinable melody of their own, as it were, one dominant
melody, distinctly Björnsonian. This unity in variety, spontaneous and
characteristic, is not found in the earlier poems not included in this
volume. So far as is known, Björnson's first printed poem appeared in a
newspaper in 1852. It and other youthful rhymes of that time extant in
manuscript, and still others as late as 1854, are interesting by reason of
their contrast with his later manner; the verse-form has nothing
personal, the melodies are those of older poets. It is in the lyrics of
_Synnöve Solbakken_, written in 1857 or just before, that Björnson for
the first time sings in his own forms his own melody.
Style and diction are the determining factors in the poetic form of lyric
verse, along with the perhaps indistinguishable and indefinable quality
of melodiousness. Of Björnson's style or manner in the larger sense it
must be said that it is not subjectively lyrical. He is not disposed to
introspective dwelling on his own emotions and to profuse
self-expression without a conscious purpose. In general he must have
some definite objective end in view, some occasion to celebrate for
others, some "cause" to champion, the mood of another person or of
other persons, real or fictitious, to reproduce synthetically in a
combination of thoughts, feelings, similes, and sounds. In his verses
words do not breed words, nor figures beget figures unto lyric breadth

and vagueness. When Björnson was moved to make a poem, he was so
filled with the end, the occasion, the cause, the mood to