Now these subjects may be gathered into a small number of groups: love, religious faith and thought, moods personal to the poet, patriotism,--love of country, striving for its welfare, pride in Norway's history, and joy in the beauty and grandeur of its scenery. The occasional songs and poems in celebration of great personalities, --whether they were of high station and renown, or lowly and unfamed, --or for festivals, earnest or jovial, are nearly all conceived in the spirit of patriotism,--love of Norway, its historic past, its present, its future. They may be social songs memorial or political poems, ballads or lyrical romances,--all are inspired by and inspire love of country. Not very many of Björnson's lyrics have love as their subject. From his tales, novels, and dramas we know that his understanding of love was comprehensive and subtle, yet this volume contains but few of the love-lyrics of strong emotion, which Björnson must have felt, if not written. He was a man of will and action with altruistic ideals; sexual love could not be the whole nor the center of life for him. Nor are the purely religious poems numerous, although Christian faith is at once the ground and the atmosphere of his lyrics in the earlier period, and some of the latest are expressions of a broad and deep philosophy of life. "Love thy neighbor!" and "Light, Love, Life" in deeds were characteristic of Björnson, rather than the utterance of passive meditations of a theoretic nature on God and man's relation to Him. Björnson's unfailing bent towards activity in behalf of others could not favor either the lyric outpouring of other purely personal moods. Such purely personal poems are then also relatively rare. Some of them, however, are most beautiful and deeply moving. Generally he frees himself in an epic or dramatic way from subjective introspection; he projects his feeling into another personality or sends it forth in choral song in terms of "we" and "our." The moods he does express more directly for himself are vague youthful longing for the great and the instant, joyous trustfulness even in adversity and under criticism, love of parents, wife, family, and friends, faith in the future and in the power of the good to prevail.