The gods of Asaheim, incensed with Loke,
A whirlwind yoked with thunder-footed steeds,
And, carried thus, boomed o'er the booming seas,
Far as the teeming wastes of Jotunheim,
To punish Loke for all his wily crimes.
They found him sitting nigh a mountain-force,
Which flashing roared from crags of ribbed snow,
Lamenting strange and weird in rushing notes
Of the old Strömkarl, who therein smote a harp
And sang in mystic syllables of runes.
For 'tis the wild man's harp and voice you hear:
He sits behind the crackling cataract
Within a grotto dim of mist and foam,
His long, thin beard, white as the flying spray
Flung to the midnight in a sounding cave
By the blind fish that leap against the winds;
Gemmed with the large dews of the cataract,
Swings in the sucking breeze, and swinging beats
Time to his harp's strains quav'ring soft and sad
Beneath the talons of his pale, lean hand.
And all the waters, leaping, tingling shake
Like shivering stars within the frozen skies,
When as the Giants of Frost rule o'er the deep,
And nip their buds with fingers hoar of ice.
Here banished found they mischief-making Loke
Beneath the faint arch of young Bifrost sate,
His foxy face between large, naked knees;
Deep, wily eyes fixed on the darting fish
In seeming thought, but aye one corner wan
Flashed at the Asas where they clustered fair,
Soft on a mountain's aged locks of snow,
Their tawny tresses ruddy in the wind.
Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth:--
Red was his beard forked with the livid light,
That clings among the tempest's locks of bale,
Or fillets her tumultuous temples black.
And drops with wild confusion on the hills;
And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice,
His sullen words were strained, and when he spake
The oldest forests bowed their crowns of leaves,
And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed
Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb.
As when, the horror of the spear-shock o'er,
And all the plains and skies of Thule are gorged
With gore and screams of those that fight or die,
The Valkyries in their far-glimmering helms
Flash from the windy sunset's mists of red
Unto the chalk-faced dead,--whose beaten casques
And sea-swol'n shields, with sapless, red-hewn limbs,
Wave 'mid the dead-green billows, stormy-browed,
That roar along the Baltic's wintry coast,
And wail amid the iron-circled coves,--
To cull dead heroes for the hall of shields,--
Where yells the toast and rings the tournament,--
A dumbness falls upon the shattered field;
The clinging billows 'mid the restless dead
Moan o'er their wide-stretched eyes and glassy sleep;
And all the blood-blurred banners, gustless, dark
Hard ashen faces waiting for the choice.
The thunderer did Loke shrewd ensnare,
Incensed for pristine evil wrought on him.
When erst dark Loke deflowered his spouse, fair Sif
The blue eyed, of her golden, baby locks.
Him the Asas dragged beneath a burning mount
Into a cavern black, by earthquakes rent
When Earth was young to heave her spawn of Trolls,
The vermin which engendered in the corpse
Of Ymer huge, whose flesh did make the world.
Here where the stars ne'er shone, nor nature's strains
Of legendary woodlands, peaks, and streams
Ere came, they pinned him supine to the rocks,
Whose frigid touch filed at his brittle bones,
And tore a groan from lips of quiv'ring froth,
That made the warty reptiles cold and huge
Hiss from their midnight lairs and blaze great eyes.
Lone in the night he heard the white bear roar
From some green-glancing berge that stemmed dark seas
With all its moan of torrents foaming down
The ice-crags of its crystal mountain crests.
And 'neath the firry steep a wild swine shrieked,
And fought the snarling wolf; his midriff ripped
With spume-flaked ivories where the moss was brok'n
Far down within the horror of a gorge;
And once he saw souls of dead mortals whirl
With red-strown hair within the Arctic skies,
And all his stolid face was eddied o'er
By one faint smile, which grimly flash'd and pass'd,
And he knew not its stonyness had changed.
And all was rock above him, rock beneath:
And all the clammy crawling things that spat
Black venom at him from deep dens of rock,
And that swart boundless flood of flowing death,
Which with its sooty spray clung to a cliff
And slid beside his marble gaze, to him
Were as the rock that curled above and hung;
Were as the rock that spread beneath and pierced;
For as to the blind to him were lidless eyes.
And pity 'twas not darker than it was,
And crammed with terrors populous as Hel's
Or that cursed dome of corpses, Naastrand dire,
Whose roofs and walls of yawning serpents slick
Hang writhing down, flat heads--reed-beds of snakes--
From whose red, hissing fangs flow slimy streams
Of blist'ring venom, gath'ring to a flood,
Wherein the basest shades eternal wade
And feel the anguish crawling down the neck,
Or glue the hair, or glut the dull, dead ear,
Or choke the blasted eye until it swims
In lurid pain and blazes 'gainst the source.
The roar of waters and the wail of pines
When whirlwinds roll the granite bowlders down
From flinty crags of storm to bellowing seas--
On noisome winds the howls of torture roll,
And rising die, cause the live dome to writhe,
And swift pour down a tempest steep of woe.
Huge Skade, of Winter daughter, giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above Loke's head,
So that the blistering slaver might splash down
Upon his chalky face, and torture him,--
For so the Asas willed for his vast crimes.
But Loke's wife, Sigin, endured not this,
And brooked not to behold her husband's pain.
She sate herself beside his writhen limbs,
And held a cup to cull the venomed dew
Which flamed the scowling blackness as it fell.
To him she spake, who swelled his breast and groaned
E'en as some mighty sea, when 'neath its waves
The huge leviathan by whalers chased,--
Cleaving thick waters in his spinning flight,
The barbèd harpoon feasting on his life,--
Rolls up pale mounded billows o'er black fins
Far in the North Atlantic's sounding seas:--
"O Loke! lock those wide-drawn eyes of thine,
And let white silver-lidded slumber fall
In the soft utterance of my low speech!
And I will flutter all my amber curls
To cast wind currents o'er thy pallid brow!--
Drink deepest sleep, for, see, I catch thy doom!--
So pale thy face which glimmers thro' the night!
So pale! and knew I death as mortals know
I'd say that he mysterious had on thee
Laid hands of talons and so slain thy soul!
So still! and all the night bears down my heart!
So pale!--and sleep is lost to thee and me!--
Sleep, that were welcome in this heavy gloom!--
It clings to me like pestilential fogs!
I seem but clodded filth and float in filth!
It chokes my words and claws them from my tongue
To sound as dull confusèd as the boom
Heard thro' the stagnant earth when armies meet
With ring of war-ax on the brazen helms,
And all the mountains clash unto the sound
Of shocking spears that splinter on gray ore!
For by dead banks of stone my words are yelled
While yet they touch the tongue to grasp the thought;
And all the creatures huddled in their holes
Creep forth to glare and hiss them back again!
Yet, for thy love, O Loke, could I brave
All trebled horrors that wise Odin may
Heap on, and, suff'ring, love thee all the more!
"For thou dost love me, and this life is naught
Without thy majesty of form and mind,
For, dark to all, alone art fair to me!
And to thy level and thy passions all
I raise the puny hillock of my soul,
Tho' oft it droops below thy lofty height,
Far 'mid the crimson clouds of windless dawns
Reaching the ruby of a glorious crest.
And then aspire I not, but cower in awe
Down 'mid low, printless winds that take no morn.--
"At least my countenance may win from thee
A reflex of that alabaster cold
That stones thy brow, and pale in kindred woe!
And when this stony brow of thine is cleft
By myriad furrows, tortures of slow Time,
And all the beauties of thy locks are past,
Now glossy as the brown seal's velvet fur,
Their drifts of winter strown around this cave
To gray the glutton gloom that hangs like lead,--
For Idunn's fruit is now debarred thy lips,
And thou shalt age e'en as I age with thee!--
Then will the thought of that dread twilight cheer
The burthen of thy anguish; for wilt thou
Not in the great annihilation aid
Of gods and worlds, that roll thro' misty grooves
Of cycled ages to wild Ragnaroke?
Then shalt thou joy! for all those stars which glue
Their blinking scales unto old Ymer's skull
In clots shall fall! and as this brooding night
Sticks to and gluts us till we strangling clutch
With purple lips for air--and feel but frost
Drag laboring down the throat to swell the freight
That cuddles to the heart and clogs its life,
So shall those falling flakes spread sea-like far
In lakes of flame and foggy pestilence
O'er the hot earth, and drown all men and gods.
"But, oh, thy face! pale, pale its marble gleams
Thro' the thick night! and low the serpent wreathes
And twists his scaly coils that livid hang
Above thee alabaster as a shrine!--
Oh, could I kiss the lips toward which he writhes
And yield them the last spark of living flame
That burns in my wan blood, and, yielding--die!
Oh, could I gaze once more into large eyes
Whose liquid depths glassed domes of molten stars,
And see them as they glowed when Morning danced
O'er scattered flowers from the rosy hills
That lined the orient skies beneath one star!
When first we met and loved among the pines,
The melancholy pines that plumed the cliffs
And rocked and sang unto the smooth fiords
Like old wild women to their sleeping babes!
Then could I die e'en as the mortals die,
And smile in dying!--But the reptile baulks
All effort to behold, or on white lips
To feast the ardor of my vain desire!
Thy face alone shines on my straining sight
Like some dim moon beneath a night of mist,--
And now the creatures come to feel at me--
The serpent swings above and darts his fang,
And I can naught but hold the cup and breathe."
Then thro' the blackness of the dripping cave
Tumultuous spake he, rage his utterance;
Large as the thunder when it lunging rolls,
Heavy with earthquake and portending ruin,
Tempestuous words o'er everlasting seas
Dumb with the silence of eternal ice;
His eyes in horrid spasms, and his throat,
Corded and gnarled with veins of boisterous blood,
Swollen with fury, and stern, wintery lips
Flaked with rebellious foam and agony
For thwarted rage and baulkment of designs.
Rash vaunter of loud wrath, one brawny fist,
Convulsed with clenchment in its gyve of ore,
Clutched mad defiance and bold blasphemy,
Headlong for battle-launching at all gods
That bow meek necks before high Odin's throne;
Yet all unhurled and vain as mists of morn,
Or foam wind-wasted on the sterile sands
Of rainy seas where Ran, from whistling caves
Watching the tempest ravened dragon wreck,
Feels 'twixt lean miser fingers slippery
Already oily gold of Vikings' drowned.
Reverberated, the loud-scoffing rock
All his unburdened blasphemies again
Flung back a million fold from riotous throats
In which demoniac laughter howled and roared,
Bellowing tremendous tumult, till his ears,
Flooded and gorged with maniac curses, grew
Stunned, deaf and senseless, and the rebel words,
Erst rolled and thundered in his godly speech,
Recoiled in oaths that, shrunk in serpent loops,
Coiled mad anathemas of violence,
Voluminous-ringed, about his heart of ice,
That now in wasted wrath of bitter foam,--
Which burst and bare big ineffectual groans,
Wretched and huge with infinite weariness,--
Spent all its storm of ponderous misery.
Her sorrow found some vent in rain of tears,
And all the cave was dumb and dead with night,
Unbroken save of Sigin's heaving sobs,
Or the baulked god's deep groans where chain'd he lay
To see the spotted serpent crisp above
And aye gape poison at his lidless eyes.
And when her bowl was brimmed till one more drop
Had cast the fifth white o'er the scorching edge,
Into the black, deep flood beside she poured
Its stagnant torture; one second's tithe the time--
The reptile's bale blurs all his milky cheek,
Burns to his bones; he starting fell, stiff twists
The sinewy steel that hugs his massive limbs
And shrieks so loud within those solitudes,
The caverns yawn unto the stormy skies,
The orey mountains rock and groan for fear,
High spew their fiery thunders, smoke, and stones.
And this all in a mist-land dim and numb,
Where giants reign, rude kings in holds of ice
Based crag-like on high vivid frozen cliffs,
The bandit castles of the Northern wastes.
Beneath the shimmering dance of Arctic lights,
Which lamp them on, they storm to fight the gods;
Swathed in their stubborn mail of sleet and snow,
Embattled 'mid the clouds with fiends of ruin,
In militant throng-legions scorn the gods;
From yawning trumpets wrought of whirling clouds
Snarl war to Thor, who, in his goat-dragged wain,
Hurls thundering forth to fight their lowering troops,
That lift black 'scutcheons of tempests orbed,
Great brands of wind, and slings of whistling storm,
From which are flung their hurricanes of hail.
With such they oft withstand the strength of Thor's
Dwarf-stithied mace, Mjolner, when he rings
To find admittance to their brains of mist,
And, cleaving, drives them to their barren realms,
Where echoes of lost wars and wars to be
Rumble 'mid ruined icebergs to the caves,
Or clang with northern shock of icy spears;
While Balder, from the abyss of deathful fogs
Restored, smiles kindlier on the whit'ning lands.
Here Loke is doomed to lie in tortures chained
Until that last dread twilight of the gods,
Wild Ragnaroke, when Odin's self shall pass:
The moon and sun consumed, the fiery host
From Muspelheim shall flaming split the heavens,
Blot out the stars with lustre of their arms;
And down the squarèd legions led by Surt
Swift whirl in fogs of flame to war with gods;
Nor Thor avail, but suffocated fall
In contest with the Midgard serpent vast.
All men and gods abolished with the world,
Which into an abyss of fume and flame
Sinks like a meteor of the Summer night,
That slides into the gold of burning eve
And with eve's gold is burning, blent and lost.
But, like an exhalation, from the wreck
A new and lovelier world with juster gods
And better men shall rise, and soar away
On wings of Love thro' skies where Truth displays
The glory of her form, Wisdom her eyes.--
Behold! the Golden Age again returns!
