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

withheld her grain.
Men saw the boding Fylgja
Before them come and go,
And,
through their dreams, the Urdarmoon
From west to east sailed slow.
Jarl Thorkell of Thevera
At Yule-time made his vow;
On Rykdal's
holy Doom-stone
He slew to Frey his cow.
To bounteous Frey he slew her;
To Skuld, the younger Norn,
Who
watches over birth and death,
He gave her calf unborn.
And his little gold-haired daughter
Took up the sprinkling-rod,
And
smeared with blood the temple
And the wide lips of the god.
Hoarse below, the winter water
Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er;

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,
Rose and fell along the
shore.

The red torch of the Jokul,
Aloft in icy space,
Shone down on the
bloody Horg-stones
And the statue's carven face.
And closer round and grimmer
Beneath its baleful 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