genius that must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his
language. A friend once asked him upon what occasion he had
felt most fully the joy of being a poet. His reply was as follows:--

"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my
house and smashed all my windows. For when they had finished
their assault, and were starting home again, they felt that
they had to sing something, and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we
love this land of ours'--they couldn't help it. They had to sing
the song of the man they had attacked."

Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through
the peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely
representative of his quality as a singer. A revised and
somewhat extended edition of this volume was published about
ten years later. Bjornson has had the rare fortune of having
his lyrics set to music by three composers--Nordraak, Kjerulf,
and Grieg--as intensely national in spirit as himself, and no
festal occasion among Norwegians is celebrated without singing
the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land of Ours," or the
noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason." The best folk-singer
is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the poet,
and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us
that life was ever more to him than song, and that existence,
where it was worth while, in the thick of the human fray,
always had for him a deeper meaning than anything he had written.
The longest poem in Bjornson's collection is called "Bergliot,"
and is a dramatic monologue in which the foul slaying of her
husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their son Ejndride is mourned
by the bereaved wife and mother. The story is from the saga