THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John ...

198
Humble roof its stay.
Our Union has its saga
Like all of Norseman breed:
It owns a golden treasure,
A memory rich indeed,
Bred in bright freedom’s morning,
Baptised in derring-do,
Made in the nation’s image
Carved and cast anew.
When Freedom’s fierce defiance
Swept wildly through the land,
Where else would soul and sinew,
As ours did here, expand?
But when the light of Reason
Dispersed the wild carouse,
That light, too, first descended
On where the students house.
March onward! That’s the challenge.
March on throughout your life!
March onward, where it matters,
In Norway’s youthful strife!
Though fifty now, old fellow,
Your youth’s not reached its end, —
For you have Idun’s apples
In thousands still, my friend!
Henr. Ibsen
Christiania University, the first in Norway, was inaugurated in 1813 after lengthy agitation
by students; Idun, a goddess whose apples assured the preservation of youth.
FOR NORWAY!
There musters now on Tyra’s lines,
This time, perhaps, the last, —
A folk beset, a folk that pines,
Its banner at half-mast.
Betrayed in dire predicament,
Betrayed when battle-clad!
Was this then what the handclasp meant
That boded well for North’s consent
At Lund and Axelstad?
The words that gushed forth there of late
As from a heart devout,
They proved but a mere prosy spate,
Now it’s the turn of drought!
The tree whose leaves such promise gave