Not very many of Björnson's lyrics have love as their subject. From
his tales, novels, and dramas we know that his understanding of love
was comprehensive and subtle, yet this volume contains but few of
the love-lyrics of strong emotion, which Björnson must have felt,
if not written. He was a man of will and action with altruistic
ideals; sexual love could not be the whole nor the center of life
for him.

Nor are the purely religious poems numerous, although Christian faith
is at once the ground and the atmosphere of his lyrics in the earlier
period, and some of the latest are expressions of a broad and deep
philosophy of life. "Love thy neighbor!" and "Light, Love, Life" in
deeds were characteristic of Björnson, rather than the utterance of
passive meditations of a theoretic nature on God and man's relation to Him.

Björnson's unfailing bent towards activity in behalf of others could
not favor either the lyric outpouring of other purely personal moods.
Such purely personal poems are then also relatively rare. Some of
them, however, are most beautiful and deeply moving. Generally he
frees himself in an epic or dramatic way from subjective introspection;
he projects his feeling into another personality or sends it forth
in choral song in terms of "we" and "our." The moods he does express
more directly for himself are vague youthful longing for the great
and the instant, joyous trustfulness even in adversity and under
criticism, love of parents, wife, family, and friends, faith in the
future and in the power of the good to prevail.

By far the largest number of the _Poems and Songs_ have as their
subject patriotism in the broadest sense, a theme at once simple and
complex. It is in them that the skald and chieftain so typically