Lo, two figures, wild and sullen,
Gliding, sliding on all fours,
Break a path at dead of night
Through a wood of gloomy pines.
It is Atta Troll the Sire,
One-Ear too, his youngest son,
And they halt within a clearing
By a stone of bloody rites.
"This same stone," growled Atta Troll,
"Is a shrine where Druids once
Slaughtered wretched human wights
In dark Superstition's days.
"Oh! what frightful horrors these!
When I think of them, my fur
Lifts along my back! To praise
God they drenched the soil in blood!
"Certes, men have now become
More enlightened. Now no more
Do they slaughter in their zeal
For celestial interests.
"'Tis no longer holy rage,
Ecstasy nor madness sheer,
But self-love alone that urges
Them to slaughter and to crime.
"Now for worldly goods they strive,
Day by day and year by year.
It is one eternal war;
Each goes robbing for himself.
"When the common goods of all
Fall into the hands of one,
Straight of Rights of Property
He will prate and Ownership.
"Property! Just Ownership?
Property is theft! O lies!
Craft and folly!--such a mixture
Man alone would dare invent.
"Never yet did Nature make
Properties, for pocketless
We are born into the world--
Who hath pockets in his pelt?
"None of us was ever born
With such little sacks devised
In our outer hides and skins
To enable us to steal!
"Only man, that creature smooth
Who in alien wool is garbed
Artfully, in artful wise
Made himself such pockets too.
"Pockets! as unnatural
As is property itself,
Or that law of have-and-hold.
Men are only pocket-thieves!
"Flamingly I hate them! Thee
All my hatred I bequeath.
Oh, my son, upon this shrine
Shalt thou swear eternal hate!
"Be the mortal foeman thou
Of th' oppressor, unforgiving
To thy very end of days!
Swear it--swear it here, my son!"
And the youngster swore as once
Hannibal. The moonbeams bleak
Yellowed on the bloodstone hoary
And that brace of misanthropes.
Later shall our harp record
How the young bear kept his faith
And his plighted oath,--for him
Shall our epic strings be strung.
With regard to Atta Troll,
Let us leave him for a space,
So we may the surer smite
Him with our unerring ball.
Traitor to Humanity!
Thou art judged, the sentence writ.
Of _lèse-majesté_ thou'rt guilty,
And to-morrow sees the chase.
[Illustration]