P. A. Munch

Many forms belong to greatness.He who now has left us bore itAs a doubt that made him sleepless,But at last gave revelation,--As a sight-enhancing power,That gave visions joined with anguishOver all beyond our seeing,--As a flight on labor's pinionsFrom the thought unto the certain,Thence aloft to intuition,--Restless haste and changeful ardor,God-inspired and unceasing,Through the wide world ever storming,Took its load of thoughts and doubtings,Bore them, threw them off,--and took them,Never tired, never listless.

Still! for he had one haven of rest:Family-life peace-bestowing!Powers of light gave repose to his breast,Calm 'mid the strife of his knowing.

Softly with music his wife led him inUnto the sweet-smelling birches!Unto the flowers and still deeper inUnder the fir-forest's churches!

Daughters drew near him in love secureCooling his forehead's hot fever;Gently their message of innocence pureMade him a childlike believer.

Or he joined glad in their light-hearted game,Colors and music surrounding,--Gone were the clouds, in the heavens cameSparkling of star-light abounding.

But as in an autumn eveningSilent, dreamy, dark, sheet-lightningWakens thought and feeling stormward,--Or as in a boat a suddenStroke when gliding as in slumberOn between the cliffs that towerIn a quiet, balmy spring night,--But a single stroke and soft, thenEcho takes it up and tossesTo and fro 'mid walls of mountains,Thrush and grouse send forth their wood-callsDeer rise up and listen keenly,Stones are rolling, all are up now,Dogs are barking, bells are clanging,Ushering in the strife of daytime,--Thus could oft a recollectionDown-light falling in that playtime,Waken all his thought and doubting!

Then it roved the wide world over,Then it hottest burned within him,--But it lavished light for others!

Rise of races, spread of language,Birth of names, all laws' close kinship,Small and great in equal passion,Equal haste and doubting goal-ward!--There where others stones saw only,He saw precious gems that glistened,Sunk his shaft the mine to deepen.And where others thought the treasureSure and safe for years a hundred,Doubt possessed him as he burrowedDay and night -- and saw it vanish!But the unrest that gave powerMade him oft the goal pass over;While to others he gave clearness,Intuitions new deceived him.Therefore: where he once had striven,Thither he would turn him never,Changed his ground and shifted labor,From his own thought-conquests fleeing.But his thoughts pursued, untiring,Followed, growing, as the fire,Kindled in Brazilian forests,Storm-wind makes and storm-wind follows!Where before no foot had trodden,Ways were burned for many millions!

Northward stretches Scandinavia'Mid the fog that dims the Ice-sea,Darkness of the months of winterLays its weight on sea and mountain.Like our lands are too our peoples.Their beginnings prehistoricStretch afar in fog and darkness.But as through the fog a lighthouse,Or as Northern Lights o'er darkness,Gleamed his thought with light and guidance.When with filial fond remembranceTenderly he sought and questioned,Searching for his people's pathways--Names and graves and rusty weapons,Stones and tools their answer gave him.Through primeval Asian forests,Over steppes and sands of deserts,'Neath a thousand years that moldered,Saw he caravan-made footstepsSeek a new home in the Northland.And as they the rivers followed,Followed them his thought abundant,Into Nature's All full-flowing.--

See his restless soul's creation!Harmony of truth he yearned for,Found it not, but wonder-workingNew discoveries and pathways,--Like those alchemists aforetimeWho, though gold was all their seeking,Found not that, but mighty forces,Which to-day the world are moving.--

Deepest ground of all his beingWas the polar power of contrast,For his thought, to music wakenedBy the touch of Northern Saga,Vibrated melodious longing,Toward the South forever tending.In his eye the lambent fire,Of his thought the glint, showed kinshipWith the free improvisatorIn the land of warmth and vineyards.And his swiftly changing feelingAnd his all-consuming ardor,That could toil the livelong winterTill caprice the fruit discarded,--That immeasurable richnessWherein thoughts and moods and music,Joy and sorrow, jest and earnest,Gleamed and played without cessation,--All a Southern day resembled!

Therefore was his life a journey,Towards the South in constant movement,--Through the mists of intuition,From the darker to the brighter,From the colder to the warmer,--On the bridge of ceaseless laborBearing over sea and mountain!

Oh, the time with wife beside himAnd his bonny playmate-sisters(Gladsome children, winsome daughters),When he stood, where evening sunshineGlowed on Capitol and Forum,--Stood where from the great world-city,As from history's very fountain,Knowledge wells in streams of fullness;--Where a clearness large and cloudlessFalls upon the bygone agesThat have laid them down to rest here;--Where to him, the Northern searcher,It would seem, he had been strayingToo long lost in history's fogland,Rowing round the deep fjords' surface;--Stood where dead men burst the earth-clodsAnd themselves come forth for witnessIn their heavy marble togas;--Where the goddesses of DelosIn the frescoed halls are dancing,As two thousand years before now;--Pantheon and ColiseumIn their spacious fate have shelteredAll the world's swift evolution;--Where a Hermes from that cornerSaw the footsteps firm of Cato,Pontifex in the procession,--Saw then Nero as ApolloLifted up take sacrifices,Saw then Gregory, the wrathful,Riding forth to rule in spiritOver all the known world's kingdoms,--Saw then Cola di RienziHomage pay to freedom's goddess'Mid the Roman people's paeans,--Saw Pope Leo and his princesChoose instead of the Lord JesusAristotle dead and Plato;-Saw again how stouter epochsRaised the Church of Papal power,Till the Frenchman overthrew itAnd exalted Nature's Godhead;Saw anew then wonted customIn its pious, still processionsWith a Lamb the great world's ruler!--All this saw the little HermesOn the corner near the temple,And the wise man from the NorthlandSaw that Hermes and his visions.

Yes, when over Rome he stood thereIn that high, historic clearness,And his eye the mountain-ridgesFollowed toward the red of evening,--Then all beams of longing focusedIn a blessed intuition,And -- he saw a church before himGreater far than that of nature,And he felt a peace descending,Larger far than all the present.

When the second time he came there,After days and nights of labor,Hard as were it for redemption,--Then the Lord Himself gave welcome,Led him gently thither, saying:"Peace be with thee! Thou hast conquered!"

But to us with sorrow strickenTurned the Lord with comfort, saying:"When I call, who then dares murmur,That the called man had not finished?"

Whoso dies, he here had finished!Spite our sorrow we believe it,Hold that He, who unrest giveth(The discoverer's disquiet,That drove Newton, drove Columbus),Also knows when rest is needed.

But we question, while reviewingAll that mighty thought-armadaNow disbanded, home-returning:Who again shall reunite it?

For when he cut his war-arrow,Lords and liegemen soon were mustered,And to aid from Sweden, Denmark,England, France, swift-flying vesselsCoursed the sea-ways toward his standard.

Royal was that fleet and mighty,By our shore at anchor lying;We were wont to see it near usOr to hear the wondrous tidingsOf its cruises and its conquests.

What it won we own forever;But the fleet is sailing homeward.Here we stand the last sail watchingAs it sinks on the horizon.Then we turn and breathe the question:Who again shall reunite it?