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Anton Martin Schweigaard (In The Church After The Funeral Oration)
By Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson
(See Note 47)
Give us, God, to Thee now turning,
Fullness of joy, tears full and burning,
Of will the full refining fire!
Hear our prayer o'er his inurning:
His will was one, the whole discerning,
His whole soul would to it aspire.
Yes; give us yet again,
With power to lead, great men, -
Power in counsel our folk to lead,
Our folk in deed,
Our folk in gladness and in need!
Thou, O God, our want preventest;
To raise the temple him Thou lentest,
A spirit bright and pure and great.
When Thou from time to call him meantest,
Her tender soul to him Thou sentest
Who went before to heaven's gate.
When Thou didst set him free,
An epoch ceased to be.
Men then marveled, the while they said:
"Living and dead,
O'er all our land he beauty spread."
Help us, God, to wiser waring,
When to our land Thou light art bearing,
That we Thy dayspring then may know.
God, our future Thou'rt preparing,
Oh, give us longing, honor's daring,
That we the great may not forego!
Thou sentest many out, -
Cease not, our God, nor doubt!
Let us follow Thy way, Thy call,
Men, words, and all!
Thy mercies shall our North enwall!
Extra Info:
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN IN THE ORIGINAL METERS BY ARTHUR HUBBELL PALMER
Professor of the German Language and Literature In Yale University
Note 47.
ANTON MARTIN SCHWEIGAARD, jurist and statesman, was born in
Kragerö, April 11, 1808, and died in Christiania, February 1, 1870.
After five years as lecturer in the University he was, in 1840, made
professor of law, political economy, and statistics. Regarded as the
most representative Norwegian of his age and its aspirations, he was
called by his countrymen "Norway's best son." Though interested in
the reform of education and the introduction of European culture,
and hence favorable to Danish literature, standing with Welhaven and
against Wergeland, it was in economics that his influence was
greatest, and indeed greater than that of any other one man in all
Scandinavia. He was the soul of the organizing labor that
accompanied and conditioned Norway's surprisingly rapid material
advance in the decades before and after the middle of the nineteenth
century. A friend of Scandinavism, in politics a liberal
conservative, but never a party man, he was member of the Storting
for Christiania from 1842 to 1869. Schweigaard's personality
contributed most to the high esteem in which he was universally
held; his character was open and direct, actively unselfish, loftily
ideal. His wife died on January 28, 1870. On a walk the next day he
suddenly was seized with intense pains, had to go home and to bed,
and died on February 1. An autopsy showed that his heart had
ruptured. Their joint funeral was held on February 5.
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