Through the blue skies over England there rushed the bright stranger--a
meteor, a comet, a fiery star! “such as no man before ever saw;” it
appeared on the 8th, before the kalends of May; seven nights did it shine
[235], and the faces of sleepless men were pale under the angry glare.
The river of Thames rushed blood-red in the beam, the winds at play on
the broad waves of the Humber, broke the surge of the billows into
sparkles of fire. With three streamers, sharp and long as the sting of a
dragon, the foreboder of wrath rushed through the hosts of the stars. On
every ruinous fort, by sea-coast and march, the warder crossed his breast
to behold it; on hill and in thoroughfare, crowds nightly assembled to
gaze on the terrible star. Muttering hymns, monks hudded together round
the altars, as if to exorcise the land of a demon. The gravestone of the
Saxon father-chief was lit up, as with the coil of the lightning; and the
Morthwyrtha looked from the mound, and saw in her visions of awe the
Valkyrs in the train of the fiery star.
On the roof of his palace stood Harold the King, and with folded arms he
looked on the Rider of Night. And up the stairs of the turret came the
soft steps of Haco, and stealing near to the King, he said:
“Arm in haste, for the bodes have come breathless to tell thee that
Tostig, thy brother, with pirate and war-ship, is wasting thy shores and
slaughtering thy people!”