But it is their very homeliness in connection with
the deep, full-throbbing emotion which beats in each forceful phrase--it
is this, I fancy, which has made them the common property of the whole
people, and thus in the truest sense national. I could never tell why my
heart gives a leap at the sound of the simple verse:
"Yes, we love this land of ours,
Rising from the foam,
Rugged, furrowed, weather-beaten,
With its thousand homes."
Kjerulf's glorious music is, no doubt, in a measure accountable for it;
but even apart from that, there is a strangely moving power in the
words. The poem, as such, is by no means faultless. It is easy to pick
flaws in it. The transition from the fifth and sixth lines of the first
verse: "Love it, love it, and think of our father and mother," to the
seventh and eighth, "And the saga night which makes dreams to descend
upon our earth," is unwarrantably forced and abrupt. And yet who would
wish it changed? It may be admitted that there is no very subtle art in
the rude rhyme:
"I will guard thee, my land,
I will build thee, my land,
I will cherish my land in my prayer, in my child!
I will foster its weal,
And its wants I will heal
From the boundary out to the ocean wild;"
but, for all that, it touches a chord in every Norseman's breast, which
never fails to vibrate responsively.
Pages:
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64