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Xx INTRODUCTION
his understanding of love was comprehensive and subtle,
yet this volume contains but few of the love-lyrics of
strong emotion, which Bjérnson 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 Bjornson, rather than the utterance
of passive meditations of a theoretic nature on God and
man’s relation to Him.
Bjornson’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 distant, joyous trust-
fulness even in adversity and under criticism, love of par-
ents, 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
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