blend in one. Of this group the influence has been widest and
deepest. In his oration at the unveiling of the statue of Wergeland
in Christiania, Björnson spoke of him and of Norway's constitution
as growing up together; with reference to this it has been maintained
that we have still greater right to say that Björnson and Norway's
full freedom and independence grew up together. The truth of the
statement is very largely due to Björnson's patriotic poems. Through
them the poet-prophet interpreted for his nation the historic past
and the evolving present, and forecast the future. Simplifying
the meaning of life, he accomplished the mission which he himself
made the ideal of _The Poet_, and became for his own people the
liberalizing teacher and molder, leading them to freedom in thought
and action, in social and political life. Of this large and seemingly
complex group of patriotic lyrics,--whether they be on its history,
or on contemporaneous events and deeds of individuals with political
significance; or on men, both known and unknown to fame, who had made
and were making Norway great; or on historical, political, and other
national festivals; or on the country, its land and sea and fjords and
forests and fields and cities, in aspects more genial or more stern,
--whether they be poems of the individual or social and choral songs,
manorial poems or ballads or lyrical romances, or descriptions of
Norway's scenery,--the unifying simple theme is Norway to be loved
and labored for.

Not a single poem is, however, merely descriptive of external nature.
Björnson's relation to nature is indeed more intimate than that of
any other Norwegian writer of his time, but here also he is epic and
dramatic rather than subjectively lyrical. He sees and hears through
what is external, and his feeling for and with nature is but a
profounder looking into the soul of his nation or the inner life of