Thrilled upward through the ground,
The Norseman came, as armed for battle,
In silence from his mound,--
He who was mourned in solemn sorrow
By many a swordsman bold,
And harps that wailed along the ocean,
Struck by the scalds of old.
Sudden a swift and silver shadow
Came up from out the gloom,--
A charger that, with hoof impatient,
Stamped noiseless by the tomb.
"Ha! Surtur,!* let me hear thy tramping,
My fiery Northern steed,
That, sounding through the stormy forest,
Bade the bold Viking heed!"
He mounted; like a northlight streaking
The sky with flaming bars,
They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,
Shot up before the stars.
"Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,
That streams against my breast?
(*The name of the Scandinavian god of fire.)
Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight
Which Helva's hand caressed?
"No misty breathing strains thy nostril;
Thine eye shines blue and cold;
Yet mounting up our airy pathway
I see thy hoofs of gold.
Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow
Walhalla's gods repair
Than we in sweeping journey over
The bending bridge of air.
"Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling
Amid the twilight space;
And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,
Has veiled her dusky face.
Are those the Normes that beckon onward
As if to Odin's board,
Where by the hands of warriors nightly
The sparkling mead is poured?
"'T is Skuld:* I her star-eye speaks the glory
That wraps the mighty soul,
When on its hinge of music opens
The gateway of the pole;
When Odin's warder leads the hero
To banquets never o'er,
And Freya's** glances fill the bosom
With sweetness evermore.
"On! on! the northern lights are streaming
In brightness like the morn,
And pealing far amid the vastness
I hear the gyallarhorn ***
The heart of starry space is throbbing
With songs of minstrels old;
And now on high Walhalla's portal
Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold."
* The Norne of the future.
** Freya, the Northern goddess of love.
*** The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over which
the gods pass in Northern mythology.