Which he in Asgard built him, there to dwell,
Against the harbour, by the city wall:
Him the blind Hoder met, as he came up
From the sea cityward, and knew his step;
Nor yet could Hermod see his brother’s face,
For it grew dark; but Hoder touch’d his arm:
And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers
Brushes across a tired traveller’s face
Who shuffles through the deep dew-moisten’d dust,
On a May evening, in the darken’d lanes,
And starts him, that he thinks a ghost went by—
So Hoder brush’d by Hermod’s side, and said:—
“Take Sleipner, Hermod, and set forth with dawn
To Hela’s kingdom, to ask Balder back;
And they shall be thy guides, who have the power.”
He spake, and brush’d soft by, and disappear’d.
And Hermod gazed into the night, and said:—
“Who is it utters through the dark his hest
So quickly, and will wait for no reply?
The voice was like the unhappy Hoder’s voice.
Howbeit I will see, and do his hest;
For there rang note divine in that command.”
So speaking, the fleet-footed Hermod came
Home, and lay down to sleep in his own house,
And all the Gods lay down in their own homes.
And Hoder too came home, distraught with grief,
Loathing to meet, at dawn, the other Gods:
And he went in, and shut the door, and fixt
His sword upright, and fell on it, and died.
But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose,
The throne, from which his eye surveys the world;
And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode
To Asgard. And the stars came out in Heaven,
High over Asgard, to light home the King.
But fiercely Odin gallop’d, mov’d in heart;
And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came.
And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang
Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets;
And the Gods trembled on their golden beds
Hearing the wrathful Father coming home;
For dread, for like a whirlwind, Odin came:
And to Valhalla’s gate he rode, and left
Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall:
And in Valhalla Odin laid him down.
But in Breidablik Nanna, Balder’s wife,
Came with the Goddesses who wrought her will,
And stood round Balder lying on his bier:
And at his head and feet she station’d Scalds
Who in their lives were famous for their song;
These o’er the corpse inton’d a plaintive strain,
A dirge; and Nanna and her train replied.
And far into the night they wail’d their dirge:
But when their souls were satisfied with wail,
They went, and laid them down, and Nanna went
Into an upper chamber, and lay down;
And Frea seal’d her tired lids with sleep.
And ’twas when Night is bordering hard on Dawn,
When air is chilliest, and the stars sunk low,
Then Balder’s spirit through the gloom drew near,
In garb, in form, in feature as he was
Alive, and still the rays were round his head
Which were his glorious mark in Heaven; he stood
Over against the curtain of the bed,
And gaz’d on Nanna as she slept, and spake:—
“Poor lamb, thou sleepest, and forgett’st thy woe.
Tears stand upon the lashes of thine eyes,
Tears wet the pillow by thy cheek; but thou,
Like a young child, hast cried thyself to sleep.
Sleep on: I watch thee, and am here to aid.
Alive I kept not far from thee, dear soul,
Neither do I neglect thee now, though dead.
For with to-morrow’s dawn the Gods prepare
To gather wood, and build a funeral pile
Upon my ship, and burn my corpse with fire,
That sad, sole honour of the dead; and thee
They think to burn, and all my choicest wealth,
With me, for thus ordains the common rite:
But it shall not be so: but mild, but swift,
But painless shall a stroke from Frea come,
To cut thy thread of life, and free thy soul,
And they shall burn thy corpse with mine, not thee.
And well I know that by no stroke of death,
Tardy or swift, would’st thou be loath to die,
So it restor’d thee, Nanna, to my side,
Whom thou so well hast lov’d; but I can smooth
Thy way, and this at least my prayers avail.
Yes, and I fain would altogether ward
Death from thy head, and with the Gods in Heaven
Prolong thy life, though not by thee desir’d:
But Right bars this, not only thy desire.
Yet dreary, Nanna, is the life they lead
In that dim world, in Hela’s mouldering realm;
And doleful are the ghosts, the troops of dead,
Whom Hela with austere control presides;
For of the race of Gods is no one there
Save me alone, and Hela, solemn Queen:
And all the nobler souls of mortal men
On battle-field have met their death, and now
Feast in Valhalla, in my Father’s hall;
Only the inglorious sort are there below,
The old, the cowards, and the weak are there,
Men spent by sickness, or obscure decay.
But even there, O Nanna, we might find
Some solace in each other’s look and speech,
Wandering together through that gloomy world,
And talking of the life we led in Heaven,
While we yet liv’d, among the other Gods.”
He spake, and straight his lineaments began
To fade: and Nanna in her sleep stretch’d out
Her arms towards him with a cry; but he
Mournfully shook his head, and disappear’d.
And as the woodman sees a little smoke
Hang in the air, afield, and disappear—
So Balder faded in the night away.
And Nanna on her bed sank back: but then
Frea, the Mother of the Gods, with stroke
Painless and swift, set free her airy soul,
Which took, on Balder’s track, the way below:
And instantly the sacred Morn appear’d.
II
Journey to the Dead
Forth from the East, up the ascent of Heaven,
Day drove his courser with the Shining Mane;
And in Valhalla, from his gable-perch,
The golden-crested Cock began to crow:
Hereafter, in the blackest dead of night,
With shrill and dismal cries that Bird shall crow,
Warning the Gods that foes draw nigh to Heaven;
But now he crew at dawn, a cheerful note,
To wake the Gods and Heroes to their tasks.
And all the Gods, and all the Heroes, woke.
And from their beds the Heroes rose, and donn’d
Their arms, and led their horses from the stall,
And mounted them, and in Valhalla’s court
Were rang’d; and then the daily fray began.
And all day long they there are hack’d and hewn,
’Mid dust, and groans, and limbs lopp’d off, and blood;
But all at night return to
