And will perhaps eternal bloom,
Without black ink's salvation,
And he will be, who least it planned,
But in life's surging dared to stand,
The best bard for his nation.

A life seventy-seven years long and but two hundred pages of
lyrical production, more than half of which was written in about
a dozen years! The seeming disproportion is explained by the
lines just quoted from the poem _Good Cheer_, with which Björnson
concluded the first edition of his _Poems and Songs_. Alongside
of these stanzas, in which the cause of his popularity and powerful
influence is also unconsciously revealed, may well be placed the
following one from _The Poet_, which discloses to us the larger
conception of the mission that Björnson himself in all his work
and life, no less than in his lyrics, so finely fulfilled:

The poet does the prophet's deeds;
In times of need with new life pregnant,
When strife and suffering are regnant,
His faith with light ideal leads.
The past its heroes round him posts,
He rallies now the present's hosts,
The future opes
Before his eyes,
Its pictured hopes
He prophesies.
Ever his people's forces vernal
The poet frees, --by right eternal.