In the poem "Solveig"
(1855) he makes the heart "in its prison envy the free-born thoughts
which fly to the beloved one's breast." His versification is gnarled
and twisted, and a perpetual strain upon the ear. As Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen
has remarked, one need not be a princess in order to be troubled by the
peas in his verse.[13] Browning himself could scarcely have perpetrated
more unmelodious lines than Jonas Lie is capable of. Nevertheless there
is often in his patriotic songs a most inspiriting bugle-note, which is
found nowhere in Browning, unless it be in the "Cavalier Tunes." The
curiosities of his prosody are (according to his biographer)
attributable to the Nordland accent in his speech. They would sound all
right, he says, to a Nordland ear.
[13] Nordahl Rolfsen: Norske Digtere, p. 527.
At the risk of violating chronology I may as well speak here of his two
collections of "Poems" (1867 and 1889) (the latter being an expurgated
but enlarged edition of the earlier), to which the present criticisms
particularly apply.
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