Woundless and fresh: such lot is theirs in Heaven.
And the Valkyries on their steeds went forth
Toward earth and fights of men; and at their side
Skulda, the youngest of the Nornies, rode:
And over Bifrost, where is Heimdall’s watch,
Past Midgard Fortress, down to Earth they came:
There through some battle-field, where men fall fast,
Their horses fetlock-deep in blood, they ride,
And pick the bravest warriors out for death,
Whom they bring back with them at night to Heaven
To glad the Gods, and feast in Odin’s hall.
But the Gods went not now, as otherwhile,
Into the Tilt-Yard, where the Heroes fought,
To feast their eyes with looking on the fray:
Nor did they to their Judgment-Place repair
By the ash Igdrasil, in Ida’s plain,
Where they hold council, and give laws for men:
But they went, Odin first, the rest behind,
To the hall Gladheim, which is built of gold;
Where are in circle rang’d twelve golden chairs,
And in the midst one higher, Odin’s throne:
There all the Gods in silence sate them down;
And thus the Father of the Ages spake:—
“Go quickly, Gods, bring wood to the seashore,
With all, which it beseems the dead to have
And make a funeral pile on Balder’s ship.
On the twelfth day the Gods shall burn his corpse.
But Hermod, thou, take Sleipner, and ride down
To Hela’s kingdom, to ask Balder back.”
So said he; and the Gods arose, and took
Axes and ropes, and at their head came Thor,
Shouldering his hammer, which the Giants know:
Forth wended they, and drave their steeds before:
And up the dewy mountain tracks they far’d
To the dark forests, in the early dawn;
And up and down and side and slant they roam’d:
And from the glens all day an echo came
Of crashing falls; for with his hammer Thor
Smote ’mid the rocks the lichen-bearded pines
And burst their roots, while to their tops the Gods
Made fast the woven ropes, and hal’d them down,
And lopp’d their boughs, and clove them on the sward,
And bound the logs behind their steeds to draw,
And drave them homeward; and the snorting steeds
Went straining through the crackling brushwood down,
And by the darkling forest paths the Gods
Follow’d, and on their shoulders carried boughs.
And they came out upon the plain, and pass’d
Asgard, and led their horses to the beach,
And loos’d them of their loads on the seashore,
And rang’d the wood in stacks by Balder’s ship;
And every God went home to his own house.
But when the Gods were to the forest gone
Hermod led Sleipner from Valhalla forth
And saddled him; before that, Sleipner brook’d
No meaner hand than Odin’s on his mane,
On his broad back no lesser rider bore:
Yet docile now he stood at Hermod’s side,
Arching his neck, and glad to be bestrode,
Knowing the God they went to seek, how dear.
But Hermod mounted him, and sadly far’d
In silence, up the dark untravell’d road
Which branches from the north of Heaven, and went
All day; and Daylight wan’d, and Night came on.
And all that night he rode, and journey’d so,
Nine days, nine nights, toward the northern ice,
Through valleys deep-engulf’d, by roaring streams:
And on the tenth morn he beheld the bridge
Which spans with golden arches Giall’s stream,
And on the bridge a Damsel watching arm’d,
In the strait passage, at the further end,
Where the road issues between walling rocks.
Scant space that Warder left for passers by;
But, as when cowherds in October drive
Their kine across a snowy mountain-pass
To winter pasture on the southern side,
And on the ridge a wagon chokes the way,
Wedg’d in the snow; then painfully the hinds
With goad and shouting urge their cattle past,
Plunging through deep untrodden banks of snow
To right and left, and warm steam fills the air—
So on the bridge that Damsel block’d the way,
And question’d Hermod as he came, and said:—
“Who art thou on thy black and fiery horse
Under whose hoofs the bridge o’er Giall’s stream
Rumbles and shakes? Tell me thy race and home.
But yestermorn five troops of dead pass’d by
Bound on their way below to Hela’s realm,
Nor shook the bridge so much as thou alone.
And thou hast flesh and colour on thy cheeks
Like men who live and draw the vital air;
Nor look’st thou pale and wan, like men deceas’d,
Souls bound below, my daily passers here.”
And the fleet-footed Hermod answer’d her:—
“O damsel, Hermod am I call’d, the son
Of Odin; and my high-roof’d house is built
Far hence, in Asgard, in the City of Gods;
And Sleipner, Odin’s horse, is this I ride.
And I come, sent this road on Balder’s track:
Say then, if he hath cross’d thy bridge or no?”
He spake; the Warder of the bridge replied:—
“O Hermod, rarely do the feet of Gods
Or of the horses of the Gods resound
Upon my bridge; and, when they cross, I know.
Balder hath gone this way, and ta’en the road
Below there, to the north, tow’rd Hela’s realm.
From here the cold white mist can be discern’d,
Nor lit with sun, but through the darksome air
By the dim vapour-blotted light of stars,
Which hangs over the ice where lies the road.
For in that ice are lost those northern streams
Freezing and ridging in their onward flow,
Which from the fountain of Vergelmer run,
The spring that bubbles up by Hela’s throne.
There are the joyless seats, the haunt of ghosts,
Hela’s pale swarms; and there was Balder bound.
Ride on; pass free: but he by this is there.”
She spake, and stepp’d aside, and left him room.
And Hermod greeted her, and gallop’d by
Across the bridge; then she took post again.
But northward Hermod rode, the way below:
And o’er a darksome tract, which knows no sun,
But by the blotted light of stars, he far’d;
And he came down to Ocean’s northern strand
At the drear ice, beyond the Giants’ home:
Thence on he journey’d o’er the fields of ice
Still north, until he met a stretching wall
Barring his way, and in the wall a grate.
Then he dismounted, and drew tight the girths,
On the smooth ice, of Sleipner, Odin’s horse,
And made him leap the grate, and came within.
And he beheld spread round him Hela’s realm,
The plains of Niflheim, where dwell the dead,
And heard the thunder of the streams of Hell.
For near the wall the river of Roaring flows,
Outmost: the others near the centre run—
The Storm, the Abyss, the Howling, and the
