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170

THORGERDA.

Voices in the Air.
THE night is riven from earth and heaven;
The day is blue in the sweet sky-dome;
The glad sea glimmers with soft sun-shimmers;
The white sea-fairies float on the foam.
The storm has faded from day new-braided
With webs of azure above the seas:
Shore-spirits, come, whilst the blast is dumb
And the seaflowers sway in the fragrant breeze.
I hear a ringing of sea-nymphs' singing,
Far out to sea in the golden haze:
Haste, sisters, haste, ere the noon have chased
The cool-haired dawn from the sweet sea-ways.
The air is golden; the storm is holden
In sapphire chains of the sleepless stars:
I see the flashing of mermaidens plashing
And merrows glinting in sea-shell cars.
Come swift, sweet sisters! Our witch-wife trysters
Will soon in the distance fade and flee:
Wide-winged we travel through the thin foam-ravel,
To ride on the weed-weft mane of the sea.

The Witch.
LO! what a golden day it is!
The glad sun rives the sapphire deeps
Down to the dim pearl-floored abyss
Where, cold in death, my lover sleeps;
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Crowns with soft fire his sea-drenched hair,
Kisses with gold his lips death-pale,
Lets down from heaven a golden stair,
Whose steps methinks his soul doth scale.
This is my treasure. White and sweet,
He lies beneath my ardent eyne,
With heart that never more shall beat,
Nor lips press softly against mine.
How like a dream it seems to me,
The time when hand-in-hand we went
By hill and valley, I and he,
Lost in a trance of ravishment!
I and my lover here that lies
And sleeps the everlasting sleep,
We walked whilere in Paradise;
(Can it be true?) Our souls drank deep
Together of Love's wonder-wine:
We saw the golden days go by,
Unheeding, for we were divine;
Love had advanced us to the sky.
And of that time no traces bin,
Save the still shape that once did hold
My lover's soul, that shone therein,
As wine laughs in a vase of gold.
Cold, cold he lies and answers not
Unto my speech; his mouth is cold
Whose kiss to mine was sweet and hot
As sunshine to a marigold.
And yet his pallid lips I press;
I fold his neck in my embrace;
I rain down kisses none the less
Upon his unresponsive face:
172

I call on him with all the fair
Flower-names that blossom out of love;
I knit sea-jewels in his hair;
I weave fair coronals above
The cold sweet silver of his brow;
For this is all of him I have;
Nor any future more than now
Shall give me back what Love once gave.
For from Death's gate our lives divide;
His was the Galilean's faith:
With those that serve the Crucified,
He shared the chance of Life and Death.
And so mine eyes shall never light
Upon his star-soft eyes again;
Nor ever in the day or night,
By hill or valley, wood or plain,
Our hands shall meet afresh. His voice
Shall never with its silver tone
The sadness of my soul rejoice,
Nor his heart throb against mine own.
His sight shall never unto me
Return whilst heaven and earth remain:
Though Time blend with Eternity,
Our lives shall never meet again.
Never by grey or purple sea,
Never again in heavens of blue,
Never in this old earth—ah me,
Never, ah never! in the new.
For he, he treads the windless ways
Among the thick star-diamonds,
Where in the middle æther blaze
The golden City's pearl gate-fronds;
173

Sitteth, palm-crowned and silver-shod,
Where, in strange dwellings of the skies,
The Christians to their Woman-God
Cease nevermore from psalmodies.
And I, I wait, with haggard eyes
And face grown awful for desire,
The coming of that fierce day's rise
When from the cities of the fire
The wolf shall come with blazing crest,
And many a giant armed for war;
When from the sanguine-streaming West,
Hell-flaming, speedeth Naglfar.
I was a daughter of the race
Of those old gods the Christians hurled
From their high heaven-hilled dwelling-place,
Gladsheimr, poised above the world.
My mother was the fairest child
The Norse-land knew, so strangely fair,
The very gods looked down and smiled
At her clear eyes and lucent hair.
And Thor the Thunderer, enspelled
By hunger of a god's desire
For mortal love, came down, compelled
And did possess her like a fire.
And from the love of god and maid
There was a child of wonder born,
On whom the gods for guerdon laid
Gifts goodlier than lands and corn.
174

There was to her the queendom given
O'er all the sprites of earth and sea,
O'er every wind that rends the heaven,
All lightnings through the clouds that flee.
Gifts did they give to her for flight
Athwart the crystal waves of air,
To cleave the billows green and white
And float among the sea-nymphs fair.
Her eyes pierced all the veils of mist
And all the crannies of the sea;
There was no hill-cave but she wist
To master all its mystery.
And since she was the last of all
The godlike race upon the earth
That could endure the Christian's thrall,
Being so mingled in her birth,
A spell was laid upon her life,
A charm of thunder and of fire,
That she should wage an endless strife,
For Thor the Thunderer's sake, her sire,
With that pale god, the Nazarene,
And all his servants on the earth,
Smite all their days with dole and teen
And waste their every work with dearth;
For that alone by sea and land
She should do battle for the gods
And for the Æsir champion stand,
Far banished from the green Norse sods.
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That child was I, Thorgerda hight
For memory of my mighty sire,
The last one of those maids of might
That ruled the fiends of air and fire.
I am the old gods' sword-bearer:
Upon this world of life and death,
Alone against the Christ I rear
The standard of the ancient faith:
I am their champion, that do wage
Unending and remorseless war
Against the new and barren age
That knows not Odin, no, nor Thor.
I am the witch of Norroway,
The sorceress that rides the blast,
That sends the whirlwind on its way
To rend the sail and snap the mast.
By day and night, by sea and land,
I wreak on men unnumbered ills;
I hurl the thunder from my hand,
I pour the torrent from the hills.
I stand upon the height of heaven
And smite the world with pestilence;
The Christ and his Archangels seven
Cannot prevail against me thence.
But more especially the night
Is given to me to work my will:
Therein, with ravening delight,
Of ruin red I take my fill.
When as the sun across the wave
Has drawn the colour from the sky
And over all the dead day's grave
The grisly night mounts wide and high,
176

My heart throbs loud, my wings expand,
I rush, I soar into the air
And falcon-like, o'er sea and land,
Valley and hill, I fly and fare.
I hover o'er the haunts of men,
Above the white town-dotted coasts,
The hollow, moon-bemaddened glen,
Brimmed with the bodiless grey ghosts.
I scatter curses far and near,
I fill the air with deaths that fly:
The pale folk tremble as they hear
My rushing wings that hurtle by.
And often, when the world is white
Beneath the moon and all things sleep,
I wake the storm-fiends in the night
And loose the whirlwind o'er the deep.
I sink the great ships on the sea,
I grip the seamen by the hair
And drag them strangling down with me
To drown among the corals rare.
I bid the volleying thunders roar,
The lightnings leap, the rushing rain
Swell up the sea against the shore,
To overwhelm the fated plain.
I stand upon the hills and hurl
The crashing thunderbolts afar,
Until the wild waves in their swirl
Blot out the sight of moon and star.
I slay the cattle in the stall,
I smite the sheep upon the fells;
The great pines in the forest fall,
Stricken and blasted by my spells.
177

The Christians call upon their God,
That cannot ward them from my power:
No living thing dares stir abroad
When as I rule the midnight hour.
No man that meets me in the night,
But he is numbered with the dead:
The world until the morning light
Is given to me for death and dread.
But, when the break of morning-grey
The cloudwrack in the east divides
And wan and woeful comes the day,
The tempest in my soul subsides;
And weary with the night's turmoil,
I seek some middle mountain cave,
Where sleep falls down on me like oil
Poured out upon the whirling wave.
Or else I cleave the glancing glass
Of the still sea and through the deep
Down to some sea-nymph's grotto pass,
Whereas the quiet corals sleep,
Unheeding if the sky is blue
Or if the storm in heaven is seen:
No whisper of the wind sinks through
The ceiling of that deep serene.
Sometimes, when heaven, frowning-browed,
Hangs o'er the earth, a leaden dòme,
I cleave the canopy of cloud
And in the middle æther roam;
Seeking some token of my race,
Some sign to fill my void desire,
So haply I may see the face
Of Odin or my dreadful sire.
178

But vast and void the æther lies;
My wings arouse no echo there,
Nor my songs, ringing through the skies,
Evoke an answer from the air.
Blank is the world: there seems no sign
Of all that was; the days forget
The gods that drank the wonder-wine
Of Freya's ) grapes whilere. And yet,
Behind the setting, now and then,
I see a crown of flame and smoke
Burn up above the fiery fen
Wherein, until the sable cloak
Of Time from sea and land be torn
And the Gods' Twilight fill the sky,
The Jötuns 'gainst the battle-morn
Forge weapons everlastingly.
And in my journeyings through the night
Across the billows' rushing race,
Midmost the main, far out of sight
Of land, I come upon a place
Where in mid-ocean, storm-possest,
When with the sky the stern sea wars,
The Snake lifts up his horrid crest
And hisses to the pallid stars.
Bytimes, too, as cold-eyed I sail
Across the wastes of middle air,
A blithe breeze wafts aside the veil
Of clouds heaped up and floating there;
179

And dimly through the rift of blue
Turrets and hill-peaks I discern
And for a space behold anew
The golden gates of Asgard burn.
And as the vision grows, meseems
Valhalla rises grey and wide;
And dim and vast as thunder-dreams,
The old gods gather side by side.
Upon his throne of elfin gold
Allfather Odin sits: his beard
Streams o'er his bosom, fold on fold,
Like mosses on an oak bolt-seared.
And all the gods around him stand,
Forset, Frey, Balder—ay, the dead
Joined to the live, an awful band:
And in the midst, with drooping head,
The semblance of my mighty sire,
Leant on his hammer, stands apart,
His sunk eyes gleaming like the fire
That glows within some mountain's heart.
A golden glimmer cleaves the gloom;
And momently, as if there rose
The sun upon some giant's tomb,
The haloed hair of Freya glows.
On Odin's breast she lies and sleeps,
Whilst, to his left and to his right,
A Valkyr armed the wild watch keeps,
By Friga, sitting stern and white.
Anon a Raven stirs and shakes
His sable wings athwart the hall;
And for a second Freya wakes,
And in their sleep the gods stir all:
180

And Thor lifts up his sunken head
And poises in his shadowy hand
His awful hammer; then, outspread,
Sleep falls again upon the band.
The Raven folds his wings anew;
The gleam of Freya's hair fades out;
And suddenly as first they drew,
The clinging cloud-wreaths fold about
The City of the seven-peaked Hill.
But I am glad for many a year:
For I have seen the gods live still
And looked on Thor the Thunderer.
And yet but seldom now the gods
Bow down unto my long desire:
But seldom in the sunset nods
Odin or Asa-Thor my sire
Strides on before me through the din
Of thunders in the midnight wild;
Nor on the hills the Nornas spin:
The gods are angry with their child.
Thor hides his visage from his maid,
For that, some little space whilere
Of days and nights, aside she laid
Her mission terrible and fair
And stooped to love as women love,
But fiercelier far than woman can,
The eagle pairing with the dove,
The heaven-born mating with a man.
181

It chanced, one summer's night of blue,
When only stars in heaven were
And like a rain of pearls, the dew
Slid through the golden August air,
My wings had borne me from the sea
To where the curving down sloped slow
Into a cirque of lilied lea,
Whereon sheep wandered to and fro.
Laid in the lap of cliff and hill,
The velvet down seemed fast asleep,
Save for the murmur of a rill
That trickled past the browsing sheep.
And now and then the herd-bells broke
The sleep of sound; and faint and far,
The ripple of the sea-surge woke
A languid echo. Not a star
Twinkled; but, in the drowsy dream
Of hill and down, it was as if
No storm was aye; and it did seem
No breakers roared behind the cliff.
The charm of peace that brooded there
Weighed on my wings; and wearywise
I floated on the quiet air,
Under the dreaming evening skies.
For momently the fierce delight
Of storm and vengeance died in me;
And some desire rose in my spright
Of rest and peace in days to be.
I was aweary of long strife:
The passion of my awful sire,
That had informed my lonely life
To wreak on men his dread desire,
182

Seemed weakening in me; and instead,
The earthly part in me arose,
Like to some fire that shows its head
Of flame above the boreal snows:
And as the keen heat melts the ice
And drives the winter-woe away,
So in my heart's fierce fortalice
Awhile the woman's wish held sway.
The godlike part in me awhile
Fainted; and in my woman's breast
The memory of my mother's smile
The empty place of hate possessed.
And many a longing, vague and sweet,
Welled up like fountains in the Spring:
My heart glowed with a human heat
And in my thought new hopes took wing.
Wish woke in me to put away
The wonted stress of doom and power,
That gave me empire o'er the day
And night in every changing hour
And made my soul a scathing fire,
An immortality of death;
And therewithal the soft desire
To breathe the kindly human breath,
To know the charm in life that lies,
To be no longer curst and lone,
To meet the glance of kindred eyes
And feel warm lips upon my own.
And as I wavered, half aswoon
With anguish of unformed desire,
The silver presence of the moon
Rose in the silence. High and higher
183

Into the quiet sky she soared;
And as she lit the tranquil sheep
And the pale plain, upon the sward
I saw the shepherd lie asleep.
Upon a little knoll he lay,
With face upturned toward the sky,
Bareheaded; and the breeze at play
Stirred in his hair caressingly.
The sudden sight to me did seem
The clear fulfilment of my thought,
As if at ending of a dream
The half-seen hope to shape were wrought
And day informed the wish of night:
For he was young and passing fair,
A very angel of delight.
With sleep-sealed eyes and floating hair.
And as I gazed upon him, lo!
The fierceness of the first love smote
The age-old ice in me with throe
On throe of passion: I forgot
My destiny in that sweet hour,
And all my birth had doomed me to,
Allfather Odin and his power.
The stars stood in that night of blue
And spoke of nought but hope fulfilled
And sweets of life with life new knit:
And through their glamour grave and stilled,
Love spoke and bade me worship it.
I could but yield: the hot blood welled
Like balms of fire through heart and brain:
My every motion seemed compelled
To some strange ecstasy of pain,
184

So sharp and sweet the new wish was:
And as it grew, my tired wings closed
And down I sank upon the grass,
Hard by the place where he reposed.
Then, drunken with a fearful bliss,
I clasped my arms about his breast
And in the passion of a kiss,
My lips upon his lips I press'd.
The hot touch burnt me like a flame:
And he with a great start awoke
And (for sleep still his sense did claim
And the dream held him) would have broke
The prison of my clasping arms:
But could not, for aloud I cried
The softest, sweetest of my charms;
And as I chanted, white and wide,
My glad wings opened and I rose
Into the middle midnight air,
Like some night-hawk that homeward goes,
Bearing a culver to its lair.
The breeze sang past me, as I clave
The crystals of the sky serene;
And presently the plashing wave
Sounded, and past the marge of green
The long blue lapses of the main
Swept to the dawnward, and the foam
Slid up and fled and rose again,
Like white birds wheeling in the gloam.
Down through the deeps of yielding blue
I plunged with that fair youth I bore,
Harmless, until we sank unto
Where through the dusk the golden floor
185

And pearl-hung ceiling of a cave
Opened upon the sombre sea:
But by my charms the whirling wave
Drew back and left the entry free.
Therein upon a bank of sand,
Bordered with corals white and red
I laid my lover. Cold his hand
Was and his face cold as the dead
And the lids fallen upon his eyes:
But soon my sorceries had drawn
The life back; and like some sweet skies
That break blue underneath the dawn,
His clear eyes opened on mine own;
The life-blood gathered in his cheek,
And gradually his fair face shone
And his lips moved as if to speak:
For at the first he saw me not;
But his eyes moved from side to side
Of that pearl-floored and golden grot,
As if with wonder stupefied.
Then, as they rested on my place,
At first, the pallor of affright
Drew all the rose-blush from his face
And made its brilliance marble-white.
But, soon, assured that I was fair,
(For of a truth new-born desire
Had bathed my beauty in a rare
Splendour as of ethereal fire)
A slow smile, gathering on his lips,
Broke into brightness, as the sun,
After some quickly-past eclipse,
Grows golden through the darkness dun.
186

His blue eyes glittered with soft light
And on his forehead's lambent snow,
The angel of a new delight
Brooded with pinions all aglow.
The passion in my veins that burned
Passed to his own like magic wine:
He raised himself with mouth that yearned
And eyes that fastened upon mine.
Then, as insensibly I drew
Nearer to him, moved by the spell,
About my neck his arms he threw
And on each other's breast we fell.
The dawn aroused me. To the dome
Of purple sea, that ceiled our cave,
The lances of the light struck home
Across the emerald-hearted wave.
Through weed and pearl the sheer sun smote
And turned the gloom of middle sea
To liquid amber, mote on mote,
Threading the air with jewelry.
And as the many-coloured rays
Played on his face, I leant my head
Upon my hand and fed my gaze
Upon my lover's goodlihead.
Long, long I gazed on him, entranced
With wonderment of dear delight,
Until the frolic motes, that glanced
Across his eyelids, waxed so bright
That needs his sleep must yield to it.
His fair face quivered, and his hand
Drew out of mine that folded it.
And then, as if some soft wind fanned
187

The petals of a flower apart,
That in their snowy bell confine
The dewy azure of its heart,
His blue eyes opened full on mine.
Once more the look of wonderment
Rose in their depths; but, ere it grew
Fulfilled, its faint beginning blent
Into a sun-sweet smile that knew
No thought save of perfected love
And happiness too sweet for speech;
And in that greeting our hands clove
And our lips grew each unto each.

Voices in the Air.
We are glad for the golden birth of the noon;
We are filled with the fragrant breath of the breeze:
The Day-god walks on the woof of the seas;
The green deeps laugh to his shining shoon;
And far in the fair sea-shadow the tune
Of harps and singings flutters and flees:
The sea-nymphs call us to follow soon,
To revel with them in the liquid leas.
All hail, sweet singers! We follow fast;
We follow to float on the white wave-run.
We stay but to finish the spells begun,
To rivet the chains of the bounden blast,
To seal the storm in the sea-caves vast
With the last few charms that are yet undone:
Then hey! for the plains where the whale sails past
And the white sea-nixes sport in the sun.
188

All hail! the sweet of the day is ours;
Our wings are wet with the salt of the sea.
Our task is over, our feet are free
To fare where the foam-bells shiver in showers
And the seaweeds glitter with glory of flowers.
The lines of the land do faint and flee:
We come to the heart of the mid-sea bowers,
On the race of the running billows' glee.
What power shall let us? Our lives are light;
Our hearts beat high with the laugh of the day.
We have sundered our souls from the dawning grey;
We have done with the dream of the darksome night;
We have set our face to the foam-line white,
To dream in the nooning the hours away,
Where the sea-swell heaves and the spray is bright
And the petrels wheel in the mid sea-way.

The Witch.
My life put on from that sweet hour
Another nature: thence, no more
I thought to wield my baleful power
Nor treasures of my dreadful lore.
There was no magic now for me
In stirring up the stormy strife
'Twixt heaven and earth and air and sea:
The memory lapsed from out my life
Of my dread mission: faded out
Was all my passion of wild hate,
My wrath ancestral, like a rout
Of dreams the sunbeams dissipate.
189

And I forgot the fearsome spell
That sealed my god-born life erewhen
With all the powers of hate and hell
To wreak the Æsir's curse on men.
The vengeance of the gods unseen,
Whilom with such a fiery smart
Kindled against the Nazarene,
No longer rankled in my heart.
The old gods died out of my thought,
As though in me they had no share:
The change Love had within me wrought
Blotted the past-time from my air.
No more I roamed the affrighted night,
Smiting the haunts of men with death:
The hamlets stood, unharmed and white,
Unblasted of my burning breath.
No curses slew the wandering folk
Belated on the wild sea-moors:
No pines beneath the thunderstroke
Crashed down among the trembling boors.
The sea slept calm beneath the sun:
No spells of mine across the sky
Unloosed the storm-clouds red and dun
Or hurled the thunders far and nigh.
But full and still the sunlight lay
Across the lapse of sea and land;
Save for the dancing ripples' play,
No surges thundered on the sand.
Love had transformed me: now I knew
None but his strife, no other bliss
Than in my lover's eyes of blue
To watch the coming of a kiss.
190

For him, I was an ocean-nymph,
One of the sweet fantastic kind,
That sport beneath the emerald lymph
And in their hair sea-corals wind.
Nought could his boyish wisdom read
Of my weird past within mine eyes:
For aye with happy love indeed
They bathed in dreams of Paradise.
And over all my haughty face
The glamour of the time had shed
A tender glow of timid grace.
The splendour of revengeful dread,
That once had marked me, was subdued
Into a glory faint and fair,
That rayed out from my softer mood,
Like sunshine in the April air.
All day within our cave we slept;
And when the sunset's scarlet shoon
Over the happy heaven swept
And in the faint-hued sky the moon
Mounted,—across the quiet land,
By hill and valley, wood and dale,
We wandered often, hand-in-hand,
Under the silver splendours pale.
And often, seated side by side,
Lost in each other's deep of eyes,
Insensibly the night would glide
Till morning glittered in the skies.
For nothing but our love we knew
In earth and air, in sky and sea;
No heaven to my gaze was blue
As that within his eyes for me.
191

I could not tire of his fair sight:
Whenever on his face I fed
My eyes, the first supreme delight
Relived in all its goodlihead.
And ever, when from sleep I woke
And saw him lying by my side,
The same sweet wonder on me broke
As when his beauty first I spied.
Ah me, how fair he was! Meseems,
Since God made heaven and earth and air,
He hath not in His wildest dreams
Made any creature half so fair.
About his forehead's lambent pearl,
Blushed with the rose-tints of a shell,
The gold locks clustered, curl on curl,
Like daffodils about the bell
Of some fair haughty lily-cup,
That in the marges of a wood
Lifts its broad snowy bosom up
And tempts the bees to light and brood.
And in its eyebrow's arching lines
Each deep-blue eye seemed, as it were,
A tarn dropped in a curve of pines,
Upon some snow-white mountain-stair.
No fruit was ever yet so sweet
As his sweet mouth, where day and night
For me failed never from his seat
The angel of fulfilled delight.
No sunlight glittered like the smile
That blossomed from his flower-cup lips;
Whereat my thirsty soul the while
Did hover, as a bee that sips.
192

No snows of silver could compare
With the white splendour of his breast:
Whilst that my head lay pillowed there,
No angel knew a sweeter rest.
His face to me was as a sun
That smote the winter-thoughts apart,
Scattering old memories every one,
And made new Springtime in my heart.
Love had brought back the age of gold:
For me, a new and fairer birth
Had made me radiant, as of old
Ask in the Paradisal earth.
It was as if a veil were drawn
That long had lain before my eyes:
Each hour upon my sense did dawn
Some splendour new in earth and skies.
The pageants of the sundown burst,
A new delight, upon my sense:
And night was radiant as the first
That fell on Embla's innocence.
The primrose-blooms of daybreak came,
A new enchantment, to my soul:
And noontide, with its flowers of flame,
Like philters on my passion stole.
Till that sweet time, the silver Spring
Had come and gone without my heed:
Nor with its flush of blossoming,
A glory fallen on hill and mead,
193

The royal Summer had prevailed
To stir the frost-time in my breast:
Nor yet the Autumn crimson-mailed:
Winter alone my heart possess'd.
But now each change of land and sea,
Each cloud that glittered in the sky,
Each flower that opened on the lea,
Each calling bird that flitted by,
Woke in my breast a new concent
Of deep delicious harmony:
My soul was grown a lute that blent
Its note with all sweet sounds that be.
My heart was grown a singing fire
That with each hour a new sweet strain
Mixed with the many-mingling choir
Of birds and flowers, of sea and plain.
My memory fails to count the lapse
Of time that held our happiness:
So full a mist of glory wraps
Its golden hours and such a stress
Of splendour folds it, that meseems
It might have been as time appears,
That in the dim delight of dreams
Holds in an hour a thousand years.
For all things yield to love fulfilled:
To those that walk in Paradise,
The falling feet of Time are stilled;
They know not if he creeps or flies.
A moment to their spreading bliss
May pass a century away;
Or in the passion of a kiss
A thousand years be as a day.
194

Ah me! though I remembered not
The seal my birth on me had set,
The wrath of Him that me begot
And the old gods did not forget.
For evermore some omen sent
A thrill of anguish through my soul:
Some levin through the clear sky rent;
Thor on the mountain-tops did roll.
And now and then, on our delight,
Across the amber wave would fall
The shadow of a raven's flight:
The great gods on their child did call
In wailing voices of the storm;
And in the sunset's gold and red,
Methought I saw the Thunderer's form
Grow in the gloaming, dim and dread.
But no sign rankled in my mind:
Love so possessed my heart and brain,
All else was but an idle wind,
A passing breath of summer rain.
One night, when not a zephyr's breath
Broke on the deep delicious swoon
Of hill and plain, and still as death,
The white world slept beneath the moon,
We tracked the quiet stream, that made
Its silver furrow through the strand,
And fell into the sea that played,
Lapping, upon the curving sand,
Up through wild wood and fern-grown fell
To where,—a silver thread across
The weeded pebbles,—like a bell,
Its fountain tinkled through the moss.
195

And parting back the lush sweet growth
Of waterweeds,—that there did cling,
As if the rivulet were loath
To yield the secret of its spring,—
We climbed through reed and fern and found
Where at the last the young stream shot
Its spire of silver from the ground,
Midmost a virgin forest-grot.
The clustered clematis hung there,
Trailed curtain-like the place before,
As if some wood-nymph with her hair
Had made the grot a fairy door:
And through the tangle wild and sweet
Of woodbind and convolvulus,
The silver streamlet, in a sheet
Of crystal multitudinous,
Poured arched above the entering,
And curving down across the roof,
Along the pearly floor did sing,
Threading athwart a tangled woof
Of moss and stonecrop, till it slid
Into a cranny of the stone,
Wherein it seemed the Naïad hid,
On green of leafage laid alone.
The place was sweet with jasmine-breath:
Across the silver-spangled grail,
Starred with blue blossoms, wreath on wreath,
Pervinck and saxifrage did trail:
And in the ultimate recess
A crowding growth of fragrant thyme
Had made a couch, such as might press
Some huntress-maid of olden rhyme.
196

The falling fountain of the stream
Alone the charmèd silence broke,
Like bell-chimes hearkened in a dream,
Unknowing if one slept or woke.
The drowsy sweetness of the place
Stole on our sense; and we, content,
Gave up ourselves unto that grace
And mingling charm of sound and scent.
Reclined upon that fragrant bed,
We lay embraced, perceiving not
Aught but the spell of slumber shed
From all that sleep-enchanted grot.
And soon the tinkle of the spring
And the soft cloud of woodland scents,
That in the dreamy air did cling,
Laid hands of balm upon our sense
And sleep fell down upon our eyes,
As softly and unconsciously
As noontide from the August skies
Falls on the ripple of the sea.
He first did yield him to the charms
Of that sweet sleep and I awhile
Lay gazing on him till my arms
Relaxed and in my thought his smile
Blent with a dream of summer days;
And his face seemed to me a flower
That from the marging woodland ways
Burns in the golden noontide hour.
And so sleep fell upon me too;
The grot died out before my sight:
But yet the stream-song did pursue
My slumbrous senses, like some light
197

Chime of sweet bells in Faërie,
Threading upon a silver string
Of mingling dreams its rosary
Of pearls. But, as the crystal ring
Murmured unceasing in my ear,
Dulled with the dream, meseemed it grew
Slowly less sweet, less silver-clear:
A change across my spirit drew;
And gradually,—as with those
Upon whose head slow water drops,
Unceasing, till the soft fall grows
An anguish horrible, that stops
The pulse of life,—so in my brain
The ceaseless sound of that soft stream
Waxed to a terror and a pain
Within the chambers of the dream.
Methought at first it was a knell
That sounded for Love's funeral:
And then, again, its tinkle fell
Like storm-waves on a cavern wall:
But ever loudlier; until
It was the distant-seeming roar
Of thunder, over wood and hill
Growing and nearing evermore.
Louder and nearer still it came,
Until meseemed above my head
The bolts broke and the lightning's flame
Tore up the heaven with rifts of red.
And in the dream I heard the car
Of Thor across the hill-tops roll,
Shaking to ruin every star:
The world trembled from pole to pole
198

With that fierce clamour and the air
Rang with the startled nightbirds' cries.
And as I lay and listened there,
The Thunderer hurled across the skies
His awful hammer. Swift and straight,
Meseemed, it clove the screaming heaven,
Ruddy as flame, and fierce as fate,
Full at my lover's brow was driven.
Down at my very feet it fell,
Flaming, and cleft the quaking ground
Down to the immost heart of hell:
And from the rift, a roaring sound
Of fires innumerous burst into
The midnight air: the very core
Of the abysmal world shone blue
And awful. Then again a roar
Of thunders unendurable
The cloisters of the æther broke,
So terrible that the dream-spell
Was cloven in twain and I awoke.
The grot was still, save for the sound
Of waters whispering through the air;
The moonlight lay along the ground
And lit my lover sleeping there.
The terror of the dream possess'd
My waking sense: with fearful ear
I listened, half affrighted lest
Some horror should be drawing near.
But not a breath the stillness clave:
The wind was silent: even the sea
Bore not thus far its rippling wave
And the birds slept on bush and tree.
199

Perfected peace held everything;
And yet there lingered in my head
The terror of remembering:
A cold sweat over me was shed
And my heart fainted in my breast:
I could not conquer with my will
The tremors that upon me press'd,
The thrill of thunders echoing still.
Some fearful presence seemed to brood
Above the place. Its every nook
Was lit with moonlight: yet I could
Awhile not lift my head to look.
At last, moved by some hidden spell,
I raised my eyes from off the floor;
And where the middle moonlight fell,
I saw a shadow in the door.
I could nor speak nor move for fear:
I could but gaze; and as I gazed,
The shadow darkened and drew near,
And from its depths two great eyes blazed
Like fiery stars. Darker it grew
And taller, till the cave was filled
With the weird presence and I knew
The awful shape of him that killed
Skadnir; for now the dusk had ta'en
Terror and beauty; and before
My shrinking sight there stood again
The figure of the Thunderer Thor,
200

Leant on his hammer. Not a word
Came from the god's lips; but his eyes
Blazed like a bale-fire. On the ground
I crouched before him, suppliant-wise,
With hands outstretched in silent dread:
For in the terror of his look
The anger of the gods I read,
As in some judgment-angel's book.
But still his eyes of changeless flame
Burnt on mine own; and as they shot
Their splendours on me, a strange shame
Rose in me, for that I forgot
The great gods banished from the earth,
The anguish of my mighty sire
And all the passion of my birth,
To follow forth a weak desire.
And as I looked upon him, still
The fulgent glory of his gaze
My every vein and thought did thrill
With memories of the olden days.
Before their searching light meseemed
The earthly part fled forth from me;
And it was but as if I dreamed
Love and its human ecstasy.
The woman's weakness of desire
Forsook my brain; and in its stead,
The old divine revengeful fire
Rose up within me, fierce and red.
Once more the wild wrath in me burned,
The passion of ancestral rage,
And once again my spirit yearned
To loose the storm-winds from their cage,
201

To cleave the quiet air with doom,
To ride the thunder through the sky,
To chase the Christians to the tomb
With lightnings darting far and nigh.
Then, as I rose, dreadful and fair
With that new fearfulness of birth,
The Thunder-god waxed brighter there,
Until it seemed the cowering earth
Trembled beneath his flaming sight.
To me he beckoned, and I grew
In stature to my godlike height;
And still my steps to him he drew.
And as I strode out of the grot
And stood beneath the quiet moon,
Behold, I looked and saw him not:
But in the sky, rune upon rune,
The stars, in characters of blood
Shone like a scroll of fate and fear:
And as possessèd there I stood,
I heard the thunder drawing near.
Then, like some fierce volcanic sea,
The weird possession of my race
Rose, myriad-minded, up in me.
One after one, like hawks that chase
Each other through the quivering air,
The spells, that startle from their rest
The tempest-demons in their lair,
Burst up, tumultuous, from my breast.
And as they winged it south and north,
The thunder broke across the sky:
The snakes of doom shot hissing forth,
Crested with bale-fires blue and high.
202

And from the rifted clouds, that shone
Livid with sulphur-flames, there fell
Rain, hail and many a blazing stone,
As though to the sheer heaven hell
Had leapt, and surging o'er the world,
Like to a canopy of doom,
Upon the cowering valleys hurled
The fires and furies of its womb.
Then my wings spread out wide and white;
And through the turmoil I had made,
Drunk with wild wrath, into the night
I mounted. Many a meteor played,
Crown-like, about my haughty head:
And as across the sky I swept,
Like serpents following where I led,
About my path the lightnings leapt.
From every corner of the sky
I heard the rush of flaming wings:
The fiends across the world did fly
And the air teemed with fearful things.
All demons in the earth that dwell
Or in the caverns of the sea
Gathered: the grisly ghouls of hell
And all the monstrous shapes that be
Within the air and in the fire
Flocked to my call, to wreak on men
The deadly passion of my sire
And the old gods: and now and then,
As, on the pinions of the wind,
Among the dragons I did stride,
With hair that flamed out far behind,
Methought I saw the Valkyrs ride.
203

And I the while chanted aloud
My sternest sorceries and hurled
My deadliest charms abroad and strowed
A rain of ruin on the world.
Each word I sang, each sign I made
Was fraught with terror and affright.
Obedient, the levins rayed,
The hailstones hurtled through the night.
A flood of fierce destruction rained
Upon the terror-stricken earth:
The hosts of hell were all unchained,
To whelm the world with death and dearth.
The ocean burst its age-old bounds
And rushed upon the shuddering shore:
As 'twere a herd of demon-hounds,
The whirling waves did leap and roar.
And soon no limit marked the place
Where the sea was and where the plain;
But over all the prospect's face
The raging waters spread amain.
And so all night I rode the blast;
And all night long, spell upon spell,
Rang, trumpet-sounded, fierce and fast,
My summons to the host of hell.
Until across the lurid gloom
A streak of wavering white was drawn
And like a grey ghost from the tomb,
Arose the pale phantasmal dawn.
Then from the world my sorcery ceased;
The demons vanished to the dead;
And at the token in the East,
The sullen ocean sought its bed.
204

Into the night the thunders died,
With wailing echoes o'er the hills;
And all the snakes of lightning vied
In flight before the morning's sills.
And then the pallid sun arose,
Ghastly with horror: like a flame
On funerals its light that throws,
Across the wasted world it came.
Beneath its rays the earth spread cold
And stark as in the swoon of death:
The flocks lay dead upon the wold,
The cattle lifeless on the heath.
The homesteads lay in ruined heaps
Or stood a void of sea-stained stone;
Save where upon the mountain-steeps
Some bolt-seared castle rose alone.
And everywhere the folk lay dead,
Mother by daughter, sire by son:
No live thing seemed to lift its head
Under the epicedial sun.
Save where, perchance, a shivering group
Of peasants on some lofty crest,
Whither for safety they did troop,
Each against each in terror press'd.
No bird-songs hailed the hopeless morn:
The thrush sat dead upon the tree;
The lark lay drowned among the corn,
The cuckoo blasted on the lea.
The forests lay in tangled lines,
Smitten against the ravaged ground;
And out to sea, great rooted pines
Whirled in the eddies round and round.
205

Upon its seething breast, as 'twere
The trophies of that night of fear.
The hollow-sounding ocean bare
The drowned folk floating far and near.
Upon the waves their lank hair streamed
Like weeds; and in their open eyes,
As on the surge they rocked, meseemed
I saw the dreams of death arise.
Above the wrack of death and dread
I floated—like some bird of prey,
Worn with long rapine—in the dead
And stillness of the growing day.
And in my heart the fierce delight
Of ruin and destruction waned;
The drunken madness of the night
Ebbed; and but weariness remained.
Landward my tired wings carried me,
Following the rill, that now no more,
A silver ribbon, joined the sea,
But swollen into a torrent's roar,
Swept raging o'er its rocky bed:
And as I floated, knowing not
Whither, I saw that chance had led
My pinions to the river-grot.
All bare it lay: the raging wave
Had stripped the creepers from the stone,
And in the opening of the cave
The rocky pillars overthrown.
The silver singing fountain-thread
Trickled no longer from the door,
An arching crystal: in its stead,
A foaming flood of water tore
206

The clinging clematises' woof.
The place lay open to the sky;
For in the storm the rocky roof
Was cloven and scattered far and nigh.
And as I looked upon the waste
Of what had been so fair a place,
With all its beauty now erased,
The memory of my lover's face
Smote on my spirit suddenly;
And in that flash of backward thought,
Remembrance startled up in me
Of all the change the night had wrought.
The anguish of past love again
Revived in me; and mad with fear
And love foreboding, I was fain
To call upon him, loud and clear.
Across the air my shrill cries rang;
But no voice answered to mine own:
Only the calling echoes' clang
Rose up and died from rock and stone.
Again I called him by his name;
And still across the quivering air
The hollow-sounding echoes came,
For sole response to my despair.
Then, dazed with agonized affright,
I plunged into the surging wave,
That filled up to its utmost height
The hollow bosom of the cave;
And in the water-darkened grot,
With trembling hands and pallid face,
Madly I sought but long found not
My lover in that mournful place.
207

At last, as in the dusk I groped—
Probing each innermost recess,
To find I scarce knew what I hoped
Or feared—a floating tangled tress
Caught in my hands, as 'twere a weed
That in its flight the water bare:
But as I looked, I saw indeed
It was my lover's golden hair.
Then, diving through the pool of foam,
I saw, upon a mossy bed
That wavered in the watery gloam,
Where lay my darling drowned and dead.
Dead by my hand! In my embrace
I caught his cold form hard and close;
And spurning back the water's race,
Up to the outer air I rose.
And with all swiftness of my flight,
Across the desolated plain
I bore him, lying still and white,
Unto my cave beneath the main.
There, as the 'reavèd lioness
Moans, raging, o'er her stricken young,
Long days and nights my arms did press
The dead and on his neck I hung.
And all my sorceries I essayed,
If haply some imperious spell
The gentle spirit might persuade
Again in that fair form to dwell.
And many a fierce and forceful prayer
Unto the gods I cried and said,
That for my service and despair
They would but give me back my dead.
208

But every charm was all in vain
And to my prayers no answer came:
Only above the rippling main
Murmured in mockery, aye the same.
At last, worn weary of my life,
For uselessness of prayer and spell,
I did forsake the empty strife
'Gainst death and on the nymphs, that dwell
In every coral-wroughten cave
And every pearl and golden hall
That lies beneath the whirling wave,
With one last effort I did call.
Then came they and with hallowing hands
Bathed him in savours of the sea,
Bound his fair breast with silken bands
Made potent with strange balsamry.
And many a sweet and secret verse
And many a rude and antick rhyme—
Fraught with a spell—they did rehearse
About the dead, so—till the time
When like the flaming of a scroll
The heaven and earth shall pass away—
His perfect body fair and whole
Should know no vestige of decay.
Since then, the gods have seized again
Their full imperial sway on me:
For evermore, in heart and brain,
I am their maid by land and sea:
I am their servant day and night
To work on men their wrathful will,
To stand their champion in the fight
Against the Nazarene, until
209

That unimaginable day,
When in the throes of death and birth
The olden gods shall pass away;
When from the sea a new green earth
Shall rise, where in a glorious band,
Transfigured and regenerate,
The new-born heavenly ones shall stand
Before a new Valhalla's gate:
When I, content with ended strife,
Shall with my glorious kindred die,
Haply to live with a new life
In a new Asgard of the sky.
But lo! the night draws on apace;
The sun is sunken in the west;
And in the clouds meseems I trace
The scarlet-burning Serpent's crest,
Hurled up against the heaven. The flame
Of the gods' wrath burns up in me;
And through my veins a searching shame
Surges and will not let me free.
The maddening memory of my fall,
From the gods' service to the deep
Of woman's weakness, in the gall
Of bitterness my soul doth steep.
And as I overpass in thought
The time when I awhile resigned
Myself to love, my heart is wrought
To rage and wrath o'erwhelms my mind.
The bygone love for one man turns
To hate against the world of men;
Within my soul the old fire burns,
The thirst for ruin swells again.
210

Across the gathering gloom of sky
The dun clouds mass; and back and forth
See where the calling ravens fly,
East unto west and south to north.
And lo! where in the sunset cloud,
Red as a sacrificial fire,
The form of Odin, thunder-browed,
Beckons unto my dread desire.
I know those signs: the old gods call
Upon their daughter to arise
From sloth and on the storm-wind's spall,
To ride the tempest through the skies.
The thunder wakens: Odin nods
And the sky blackens o'er the main:
My wings spread out: I come, great gods!
Your maid is wholly yours again.

Voices in the Air.
The soft skies darken;
The night draws near;
I lie and hearken;
For in my ear
The land breeze rustles across the mere;
The corby croons on the haunted brere.
The sea has shrouded
The dying sun;
The air is clouded
With mist-wreaths dun:
The gold lights flicker out one by one:
The day is ended, the night begun.
211

The pale stars glisten;
The moon comes not:
I lie and listen
I know not what:
Meseems the breath of the air is hot,
As though some levin across it shot.
The petrels flutter
Along the breeze;
A moaning mutter
Is on the seas:
A strange light over the billows flees;
The air is full of a vague unease.
Alas, sweet sister,
What fear draws nigh?
What witch-lights glister
Athwart the sky?
My heart with terror is like to die;
And some spell holds me: I cannot fly.
Was that the thunder?
A strange sound fled
And fainted under
The Westward red.
My weak wings fail me for dint of dread;
The silence weighs on my heavy head.
O help me, sweetest!
Of all our race
Thou that art fleetest
And most of grace!
The dread of the night draws on apace,
And we are far from our resting-place.
212

Lo, there a levin!
From shore to shore
Of midmost heaven
Hell-bright it tore;
And hark, the thunder! on heaven's floor
It breaks and volleys in roar on roar.
The witch! She rises
Higher and higher;
The gleam of her eyes is
A blue bale-fire;
Her stern face surges; her wings aspire;
Her gold hair flames like a funeral pyre.
Her incantations
Are in the air;
From out their stations
On heaven's stair
The angels flutter in wild despair;
The clouds catch fire at her floating hair.
Her spells have blotted
The stars from sight;
The sea is clotted
With foam-wreaths white:
The storm-clouds shut out the heaven's light:
Hell's peoples gather across the night.
The sea grows higher,
And evermore
The storm draws nigher,
The billows roar;
The levins lighten us o'er and o'er;
The fire-bolts hurtle on sea and shore.
213

Is there no fleeing?
Sweet sister, speak.
Hearing and seeing
Grow dim and weak.
Is't grown too late and too far to seek
The land and the grot by the little creek?
I see death hover;
I cannot fly:
Is all hope over
And must we die?
My voice is failing: I can but sigh:
Can this be death that is drawing nigh?
I call her vainly;
She answers not:
Alas! too plainly
The cause I wot.
Her sweet face sleeps in the dim sea-grot;
The sea-snakes over her bosom knot.
The weed is clinging
Her locks among;
The sea is singing
Her wild death-song:
Farewell, sweet sister! but not for long:
Upon me also the death-chills throng.
The stern sea surges
Against the sky;
Like sobbing dirges
The wild winds sigh;
My sea-drenched wings all powerless lie;
The, light is fading from heart and eye.
214

The billows thunder;
The foam-bells flee:
My head sinks under
The raging sea:
The life is fainting, is failing me:
I come, sweet sister, I come to thee!

 

The enchanted ship, in which, according to the Norse mythology, the Jötuns, or giants, and the demons that dwell in Muspelheim (the land of fire) shall at the last day sail over sea and land, led by the Fenris-wolf and the Midgard serpent, to the assault of Asgard, the dwelling of the gods.

Æsir, the Northern gods, so called from their supposed Asian origin.

Freya, the Northern Venus, who prepared from grapes or apples the drink that gave the gods eternal youth.

Ragnärok, the end of the world.

The Midgard-serpent, that lies coiled around the world.

Odin was fabled to have two Ravens, Thought and Memory, who brought him tidings of all that went on in the world.

The Asian Thor, the special title of the Thunder-god.

Nornas, the Northern Fates.

Ask and Embla, the Northern Adam and Eve.

Ask and Embla, the Northern Adam and Eve.

A Norse Titan, who scaled Asgard and was slain by Thor.

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