The poems of Madison Cawein

A daughter of Winter, Skade, a giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above his head,
So that its blistering venom, roping down,
Beat on his upturned face and tortured him.

Him had the gods of Asgard, Odin and Thor,
Weary of all his wiles and evil ways,
Followed, and after many stormy moons,
Within the land of giants overcome,
In Jotunheim, and dragged beneath the world,
Into a cave the earthquake's hands had built,
A cavern vast and terrible as that,
They tell of Hel's, whose ceiling is of snakes,
That hang, a torrent torture, yawning slime,
In whose slow stream eternal anguish wades.
And for his crimes they chained him to a rock,
His lips still sneering and his eyes all scorn,
And left him with the serpent over him,
And, gathering round him from their larvæ lairs,
Monsters, huge-warted, eyed with wells of fire.

198

But Sigyn, Loké's wife, stole in to him,
And sate herself beside his writhen limbs,
And held a cup of gold against the mouth
Of ceaseless poison dripping in the gloom.
Was it her voice lamenting? or the sound
Of far abysmal waters falling, falling
Down tortured labyrinths of hollow rock?
Or was't the Strömkarl? he whose hoary harp
Is heard remote; who, syllabling strange runes,
Sits gray behind the crashing cataract,
Within a grotto dim with mist and foam;
His long thin beard, white as the flying spray,
Slow-swinging in the wind and keeping time
To his wild harp's notes, murmuring, whispering
Beneath the talons of his hands of foam.

Was it the voice of Sigyn? whose sad sound
Soft from the deathless hush detached itself,
As some pale star from darkness that reveals
The heavens in its fall; or but the deeps
Of silence speaking to the deeps of night?
Sad, sad, and slow, yea slower than sad tears
That fall from blinded eyes, her sad words fell:—
“O Love! O Loké! turn on me thine eyes!

199

Thy motionless eyes that woe has changed to stone;
That slumber will not seal nor any dream.
Yea, I will woo her down; woo Slumber down,
From her fair far-off skies, with some old song,
The croonéd syllables of some refrain,
Sung unto childhood by the mothers of men.
Or shall I soothe thine eyes shut with my hair,
The fluttered amber of deep curls, until
They shall forget their stone stolidity,
And sleep creep in between the linéd lids
And summon memory and pain away?

“Pale, pale thy face, that seems to stain the night
With pallor; hueless as the brows of death.
So pale, that knew we Death, as mortals know,
I'd say that he, mysterious, had laid hands
Of talons on thee and had left thee so.
So still! and all the night is in my heart.
So tired! and sleep is not for thee or me,
Never again for our o'erweary limbs!
Around, the shadows crouch; vague, obscene shapes,

200

In horrible attitudes; and all the night,
Above, below, seems so much choking fog,
That clogs my tongue, or with devouring maw
Swallows my words and makes them sound far off,
Remote, deep down, emboweled of the Earth.
And then again it hounds them from my tongue
To sound as wildly clamorous as the hills
Sound when Earth shakes with armies; men that meet
With Berserk fury, shouting, and the hurl
And shock of iron spears on iron shields,
And all the world is one wild wave of helms,
And all the air is one wild wind of swords,
On which the wild Valkyries ride and scream.
Dread cliffs, dread chasms of rocks howl back my words
While yet they touch the tongue to grasp the thought;
And all the vermin, huddled in their holes,
Creep forth to glare and hiss them back again.

“How long! how long ago since we beheld
The rose of morning and the lily of noon,
The great red rhododendron of the eve!
How long! how long ago since we beheld

201

Those thoughts of God, the stars, that set their flowers
Imperishably in the fields of heaven,
And the still changing yet unchanging moon!
So long, that I unto myself seem grown,
As thou, long since, to rock; in sympathy
With all the rock above us and around.
My countenance hath won, long since, with thee,
The reflex of an alabaster black
That builds vast walls around us, and whose frown
Makes stone thy brow as mine. O woe! O woe!
And now that Idun's apples are denied,
Are not for lips of thee nor lips of me,—
The apples of gold that still keep young the gods,—
The years shall cleave this beautiful brow of thine
With myriad wrinkles; and, in time, this hair,
Brown, brown, and softer than the fur of seals,
Shall lose its lustre and instead shall lie
A drift of winter in a winter cave,
A feeble gray seen in the glimmering gloom.
But I shall age, too, even as thou dost age.
Yet, yet we can not die; the immortal gods

202

Can never die! what punishment to know!
What pain to know we age yet can not die!
Death will not come except with Ragnarok.—
That thought be near! take comfort from the word,
The dark word Ragnarok, which is thyself;
Thy vast revenge; thy monster synonym;
Thy banquet of destruction. Thou, whom fate,
The Norns, reserve to war and waste the worlds
Of gods and men, with thy two henchmen huge,
The wolf and snake, the Fenris, that devours,
The Midgard, that engulfs the universe.
O joy! O joy! then shall those stars, that glue
Their blinking scales unto old Ymer's skull,—
The dome of heaven,—shudder from their spheres,
A streaming fire; and thou, O Loké, thou,
Elected annihilation, shalt arise,
To devastate the Earth and Asaheim.
And as this darkness now, this heavy night,
Clings to and chokes us till we, strangling, strive
With purple lips for light, and feel the dark

203

Drag freezing down the throat to swell the weight
That houses in our hearts and peoples our veins,
So shall thy hate insufferably spread
In fires of Hel, in fogs of Niflheim,
Storm-like from pole to pole, o'erwhelming all.—
The Twilight of the Gods, behold, it comes!
The Twilight of the Gods!—The root-red cock
I seem to hear crow in the halls of Hel!
The blood-red cock, whose cry shall bid thee rise!

“But, oh! thy face! paler it seemeth now
Than icy marble; and the serpent writhes
Its rustling coils and twists its livid length,
Hissing, above thee, pouring eternal pain.—
Oh, could I kiss the lips o'er which he swings!
The lips that once touched living flame to mine!
At which sweet thought, as some sick flower of drought
At dreams of dew, my lips with longing ache!
—Oh, could I gaze once more into thine eyes

204

Whose starry depths outstarred the midnight heavens!
Or see them laugh as golden morning laughs,
Leaving her steps in roses on the hills,
The peaks that wall the world and pierce the clouds;
The hills, where once we stood, among the pines,
The melancholy pines that plume the crags,
And rock and sing unto the still fiords
Like gaunt wild-women lullabying their babes!
Then could I die e'en as the mortals die,
And smile in dying!—But the serpent baulks
Each effort to behold, or on loved lips
To ease the torture of my soul's desire.
Thy face alone is comfort to my gaze,
Like some dim moon silvering through night and mist.
—Now from their lairs again the monsters creep;
I feel their ghastly touches, and their eyes
Draw steadily nearer, wandering will-o'-the-wisps;
The serpent strives to fang me as he swings;
And in the cup's caked gold the venom swims,
Seethes upward horribly to the horrible edge.”

205

She ceased. And then, heard through the echoing night,
The chained god spoke, tumultuous violence
And rage in every word. His utterance seemed
Large as the thunder when it, rolling, plants,—
Heavy with earthquake and impending ruin,—
Seismic feet on everlasting seas
And mountains silent with eternal ice.
His eyes in hideous labor; and his throat,
Corded and gnarled with veins of boisterous blood,
A crag of fury; and his foaming lips,
A maelstrom of rebellious agony,
Of thwarted rage and wild, arrested wrath.
Fierce vaunter of loud hate, one mighty fist,
Convulsed with clenchment, in its gyve of ore,
Headlong for battle-launching, at the gods
Clutched mad defiance, madder blasphemy;
Yet all unhurled and vain as mists of morn,
Or foam, wind-wasted on the sterile sands
Of rainy seas, when Ran, from whistling caves,
Watching the tempest-driven dragon wreck,
Already in her miser fingers feels
The viking gold that has not yet gone down.
Then all the cave again is dumb with night.

206

He sees the spotted serpent writhe above;
He sees the poison streaming towards his eyes.
And now her cup is brimmed; but one more drop
Will float the filth gray o'er the venomed edge.
Into the river slowly flowing by
Swiftly she pours the vitriol torture: scarce
A tithe of time it takes, but in that time
The reptile's vomit slimes his helpless face,
Burns to the bone. . . . All his fierce muscles twist,
Wrenching the knotted steel that locks his limbs,
And shriek on shriek divides the solitudes.
The ocean roars; and, under toppling skies,
The mountains avalanche from pine-pierced sides
Their centuries of snow. Then all the night
Once more is filled with silence and with sighs.

University of Virginia Library

LOKÉ AND SIGYN