The music of the waves here produces the effect of a magnificent cradle song. It is one to the dreaming hero whose great hope is that he may be able to see the nails give way in the planks of his ship, as death opens the portals to the stream of ransoming waters, and himself, covered by eternal silence, rest in the depths below, while in sublime moonlight nights, when the silver sheen of the moonbeams plays on the mighty surface, "the waves his name tow'rd the strand are rolling." IV. Twice in his life Björnson has officiated as theatre-director: 1857-59 in Bergen, 1865-67 in Christiania. In the autumn of 1857, in pursuance of an invitation from Ole Bull, he undertook the management of the stage in the former provincial city, which is always alive with political and intellectual agitations, and he brought the theatre, which had greatly run down, to a high degree of excellence, while at the same time he passed happy days of his youth in the society of Ole Bull. As director of the stage in Christiania he had a successful but all too brief career. He himself possesses so many of the qualities of a great actor that he was well calculated to make an admirable manager; the scenic art of his native land owes much to him, for it was he who guided the first wavering efforts to make a national stage. His experiences as a stage-manager have served him in very good stead as a play-writer; nevertheless, he has never attained technical perfection in this capacity. His dramas contain far more poetry than skilful manipulation. "Sigurd," the great trilogy, is not adapted to the stage, and, as far as I am aware, has never been performed.[3] His vigorous and wildly passionate youthful drama, "Hulda," gains little or nothing by being put on the stage. Two of the plays of his first period, however, have met with a complete stage success. "Maria Stuart in Scotland" (1864) and "De Nygifte" (The Newly Married Couple, 1865).