, he has no
need of going into paroxysms in order to prove his sincerity. To those
who regard the declamatory note as indispensable to a national hymn (as
we have it, for instance, in "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star-spangled
Banner") the low key in which Bjoernson's songs are pitched will no doubt
appear as a blemish. But it is their very homeliness in connection with
the deep, full-throbbing emotion which beats in each forceful phrase--it
is this, I fancy, which has made them the common property of the whole
people, and thus in the truest sense national. I could never tell why my
heart gives a leap at the sound of the simple verse:

"Yes, we love this land of ours,
Rising from the foam,
Rugged, furrowed, weather-beaten,
With its thousand homes."

Kjerulf's glorious music is, no doubt, in a measure accountable for it;
but even apart from that, there is a strangely moving power in the
words. The poem, as such, is by no means faultless. It is easy to pick
flaws in it. The transition from the fifth and sixth lines of the first
verse: "Love it, love it, and think of our father and mother," to the
seventh and eighth, "And the saga night which makes dreams to descend
upon our earth," is unwarrantably forced and abrupt. And yet who would
wish it changed? It may be admitted that there is no very subtle art in
the rude rhyme:

"I will guard thee, my land,
I will build thee, my land,
I will cherish my land in my prayer, in my child!
I will foster its weal,
And its wants I will heal
From the boundary out to the ocean wild;"

but, for all that, it touches a chord in every Norseman's breast, which
never fails to vibrate responsively.

As regards Bjoernson's prosody, I am aware that it is sometimes
defective. Measured by the Tennysonian standard it is often needlessly
rugged and eccentric. But a poet whose bark carries so heavy a cargo of
thought may be forgiven if occasionally it scrapes the bottom. Moreover,
the Norwegian tongue has never, as a medium of poetry, been polished and
refined to any such elaborate perfection as the English language
exhibits in the hands of Swinburne and Tennyson.

The saga-drama, "Sigurd the Crusader," which was also published in 1870,
is a work of minor consequence. Its purpose may be stated in the
author's own words:

"'Sigurd the Crusader' is meant to be what is called a 'folk-play.'
It is my intention to make several dramatic