The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan :: :: University of Virginia Library

The wind is blowing, the skies are snowing,
The ice is rent and the rocks are riven,
But morning light in the north is growing,
Crimson light of the altars of heaven.
Silent, still, amidst the storm,
Sitteth there the formless Form,
Hearkening out of his hoary hair,
Waiting on in a dark despair,
While the burning heavens flame o'er him! . . .
Suddenly, wild and wing'd and bright,
Towering to heaven in shroud of white,
A phantom upriseth against the light
And standeth vast before him. . . .
Is it a Shadow, or only the snow?
The skies are troubled, the light burns low,
But stars still gather and gather.
Is it a Shadow, or only the snow,
Uprising there in the blood-red glow,
Ever towering higher and higher,
In a robe of whiteness fringed with fire,
Outstretching wings without a cry
From verge to verge of the burning sky,
With eyes on the eyes of the Father?

Now Balder crieth, ‘What shape comes there,
Terrible, troubling the heavens and air?
Is it Norna the arctic swan,
The bright and bodiless Skeleton,
Bird-shaped, with a woman's breasts and eyes,
Whose wings are wide as the world and skies?
Is it Norna, or only the snow,
Moving yonder against the glow,
Ever towering higher and higher,
Ever outspreading pinions dire
And looking down in a dumb desire,
With eyes on the eyes of the Father!’

It is not Norna, it is not the snow.
The skies are troubled; the light burns low;
Yet stars still gather and gather.
‘Father! Father! awaken, awaken!
One bends above thee with bright hair shaken
Over thy throne like a falling flame;
One toucheth thy cheek and nameth thy name,
In a voice I hear, in a tone I know;
It is not Norna, it is not the snow,
By the face and the voice and the tone.
Vaster than these and vaster than thou,
Touching the stars with a shining brow,
Flickering up to the twinkling shades
Where the wild aurora flashes and fades,
Spreading its wings from east to west,
As an eagle that looks on a hawk in its nest
It hungereth over thy throne!
Father! my Father!’

‘He cannot hear—
Hide thy face, for the hour is near—
Hush!’ . . . .

. . . Who shrieks in the heart of the night? . . .
Terrible, desolate, dumb and blind,
Like a cloud snow-white
Struggling and rent in the claws o' the wind,
The Father hath risen with no sound
'Mid the wild winds wavering around,
And his stirring deepens the storm.
The ice is shaken beneath his tread,
The meteors burn around his head,
But faster, thicker, out of the skies,
Blotting his shape from Balder's eyes,
The wild flakes waver and swarm.
Now face to face in the blood-red gleam,
Like clouds in the sunset, like shapes in a dream,
Face to face, with outstretch'd hands
Like lightning forks that illume the lands,
Face to face, and sight to sight,
Like vulture and eagle fierce for fight,
They rise and they rise against the skies,—
Alfadur with his fiery eyes,
And the other vaster Form!

It is not Norna, but stranger and brighter,
It is not the snow, but wilder and whiter;
Ever greater yet it grows
Wrapt about with whirling snows,
Ever it dilateth on,
Till, a crimson Skeleton,
With his head against the sky
Where the pale lights flicker and die,
Strange, he stands, with orbs of fire
Looking down upon the Sire.
See, O see upon his brow
Strangest lustre liveth now,

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On his neck and round his frame
Twines a snake of emerald flame. . . .
Death, O Death, can it be thou?

‘Father, father! I cannot see—
The heavens are bright, but the world is white,
The wings of the wan Form cover thee—
Around and around, with no sigh, with no sound,
Like the mists of a cloud, like the folds of a shroud,
They enwrap thee,—and hide thee from me!’