Narrative Poems, part 5, Among Hill etc | Page 5

light?The Jotun shapes of mountains?Came crowding through the night.
The gray-haired Hersir trembled?As a flame by wind is blown;?A weird power moved his white lips,?And their voice was not his own.
"The AEsir thirst!" he muttered;?"The gods must have more blood?Before the tun shall blossom?Or fish shall fill the flood.
"The AEsir thirst and hunger,?And hence our blight and ban;?The mouths of the strong gods water?For the flesh and blood of man!
"Whom shall we give the strong ones??Not warriors, sword on thigh;?But let the nursling infant?And bedrid old man die."
"So be it!" cried the young men,?"There needs nor doubt nor parle."?But, knitting hard his red brows,?In silence stood the Jarl.
A sound of woman's weeping?At the temple door was heard,?But the old men bowed their white heads,?And answered not a word.
Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla,?A Vala young and fair,?Sang softly, stirring with her breath?The veil of her loose hair.
She sang: "The winds from Alfheim?Bring never sound of strife;?The gifts for Frey the meetest?Are not of death, but life.
"He loves the grass-green meadows,?The grazing kine's sweet breath;?He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,?Your gifts that smell of death.
"No wrong by wrong is righted,?No pain is cured by pain;?The blood that smokes from Doom-rings?Falls back in redder rain.
"The gods are what you make them,?As earth shall Asgard prove;?And hate will come of hating,?And love will come of love.
"Make dole of skyr and black bread?That old and young may live;?And look to Frey for favor?When first like Frey you give.
"Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows?The summer dawn begins?The tun shall have its harvest,?The fiord its glancing fins."
Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell?"By Gimli and by Hel,?O Vala of Thingvalla,?Thou singest wise and well!
"Too dear the AEsir's favors?Bought with our children's lives;?Better die than shame in living?Our mothers and our wives.
"The full shall give his portion?To him who hath most need;?Of curdled skyr and black bread,?Be daily dole decreed."
He broke from off his neck-chain?Three links of beaten gold;?And each man, at his bidding,?Brought gifts for young and old.
Then mothers nursed their children,?And daughters fed their sires,?And Health sat down with Plenty?Before the next Yule fires.
The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;?The Doom-ring still remains;?But the snows of a thousand winters?Have washed away the stains.
Christ ruleth now; the Asir?Have found their twilight dim;?And, wiser than she dreamed, of old?The Vala sang of Him?1868.
THE TWO RABBINS.
THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten?Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,?Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,?Met a temptation all too strong to bear,?And miserably sinned. So, adding not?Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught?No more among the elders, but went out?From the great congregation girt about?With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,?Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,?Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid?Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice,?Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,?Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend?Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;?And for the evil day thy brother lives."?Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives?Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells?Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels?In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees?Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees?Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay?My sins before him."
And he went his way?Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;?But even as one who, followed unawares,?Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand?Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned?By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near?Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,?So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low?The wail of David's penitential woe,?Before him still the old temptation came,?And mocked him with the motion and the shame?Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred?Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord?To free his soul and cast the demon out,?Smote with his staff the blankness round about.
At length, in the low light of a spent day,?The towers of Ecbatana far away?Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint?And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint?The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,?Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom?He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One?Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon?The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,?Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men?Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence?Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense?Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore?Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more?Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,?Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame.?Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine,?May purge my soul, and make it white like thine.?Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!"
Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind?Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare?The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.?"I too, O friend, if not in act," he said,?"In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not read,?'Better the eye should