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Norwegian Students' Greeting With A Procession
By Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson
TO PROFESSOR WELHAVEN
(See Note 36)
Hear us, O age-laden singer!
Streams of your tones are returning,
Touching your heart!
Spirit of youth is their bringer,
Under your window with yearning
Called by your art.
Now our soul's echoes abounding
Soar in the blue,
In the sun-shimmering blue,
High where your silvery song-notes are sounding.
Smile on your labor now lightened,
You who in winter perfected
Seeds to be sown!
All that your courage has brightened,
All that your pity protected,
Now it is grown;
Over your shoulders upswinging,
Folds round your frame,
Bringing in roses your name,
Joyous the sprite of your poetry bringing.
Onward our life is now marching,
Banner-like high thoughts are flying,
Lifted to view.
One 'mid the foremost o'erarching
Leads where the pathway is lying, -
It came from you!
Runes of our past with their warning
Carved on its shaft,
Show us the spring you have quaffed,
Leading our land to the light of the morning.
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 36.
NORWEGIAN STUDENTS' GREETING TO PROFESSOR WELHAVEN. Johan Sebastian
Cammermeyer Welhaven was born December 22, 1807, lived from 1828 in
Christiania, was lector from 1840 to 1846, and from 1846 to 1868
professor of philosophy in the University; he died October 21, 1873.
His poetical works were: Norway's Dawn, 1834; Poems, 1839; New
Poems, 1845; Half a Hundred Poems, 1848; Pictures of Travel and
Poems, 1851; A Collection of Poems, 1860. A polemical writer, gifted
with wit and fine taste, and a social-political author, Welhaven
represented in his earlier period the "party of intelligence"" over
against the chauvinism of the radical Peasant party of Wergeland
(see Note 78). He was an adherent of Danish culture and of the
esthetic view of art and life, who hated all national exclusiveness
and showed a love of his country no less true and intense
than Wergeland's by chastising the Norwegians of his time for their
big, empty words and their crass materialism. For this he was
rewarded with abuse, and called "traitor to his country" and
"matricide." In reality Welhaven was a dreamer, a worshiper of
nature, a man of tender feeling. His subjective lyric poetry is not
surpassed in richness of content and beauty of form by that of any
other Norwegian. Outside of his ordinary University duties Welhaven
was also active; he was a favorite speaker at student festivities
and musical festivals, notably at the Student Meetings in Upsala,
1856, and in Copenhagen, 1862. But early in 1864 his health failed
and he was unable thereafter to lecture regularly. In August, 1868,
he requested to be retired; on September 24, the University
Authorities granted his request and a pension at the highest rate;
but the Storting, on November 12, reduced this to two-thirds of the
amount proposed. The same day the students brought to Professor
Welhaven their farewell greeting, marching with flags to his
residence, where this poem of homage was sung.
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