Then was the ground grown with green leafage.
The Sun wheel’d from the south with her brother Moon,
And cast her right hand athwart heaven’s border:
The Sun wist not where her seat should be:
The Moon wist not where his main should be:
The Stars wist not where their stead must be.”
Stone still sat every man of them while Biorn spake the Spae-Wife’s Lay. Only as the song went on men seemed to draw nearer together with a gradual motion not to be seen (as hard it is to see the moving onward of stars), as though there were in that song something houseless, that made them huggle together for warmth and light and right flesh and blood. And it was as if the murk and sable night huddled and stirred on the smoky confines of the firelight behind and round and above the feasters; as if in the murk of it were a myriad watchers, unbeholden yet close, waiting and watching, while Biorn stood forth in the brightness and spoke his Lay. Harald the King sat back in his high seat hunched up in his beard. With one great hairy fist before him on the table he grasped the drinking horn, stock still. His eyes were cast down for the first while; then he raised them and fixed a dark and troubled stare on Styrbiorn, that was set over against the King in the high seat on the lower bench. But Styrbiorn, sitting erect there, seemed to be thinking of nought but of the song. His two hands grasped the pillars of the high seat a little above his head on either side; the polished links of his ring-byrny glinted and slept with his mighty chest’s quiet rise and fall; his nostrils widened, as if in the surging wash and rhythm of the great Lay he heard the sea surge beneath his keel, his surf-deer, sweeping him on to where surf and cliff break together on some unimagined shore.
And now was Biorn come to that part of the song that speaketh of the fostering of that Wolf who—
“Feedeth on the lives of fey men death-doom’d,
He redeemeth the Gods’ heaven red with gore.
Dark is on the sunshine: no summer after:
All weathers ill weathers.—Wist ye yet, or what?”
And now he sang of the latter things: of Ragnarok and the Twilight of the Gods—
“Sate on the howe there and strake harp-string
The Grim Wife’s herdsman, glad Eggthér.
Crow’d mid the cocks in Cackle-spinney
A fair-red cock who Fialar hight.
Crowed in Asgarth Comb-o’-Gold,
Fighters to wake for the Father of Hosts.
But another croweth to Earth from under:
A soot-red cock from the courts of Hell. —
Garm bayeth ghastful at Gnipa’s cave:
The fast must be loos’d and the Wolf fare free.
Things forgot know I, yea, and far things to come:
The Twilight of the Gods; the grave of Them that conquer’d.
Brother shall fight with brother, and to bane be turned:
Sisters’ offspring shall spill the bands of kin.
Hard ’tis with the world: of whoredom mickle:
An axe age, a sword age: shields shall be cloven;
A wind age, a wolf age, ere the world’s age founder.
Mimir’s children are astir, the Judge up standeth,
Even with the roar of the Horn of Roaring.
High bloweth Heimdall: the Horn is aloft;
And Odin muttereth with Mimir’s head.
Shuddereth Yggdrasill’s Ash on high,
The old Tree groaneth, and the Titans are unchain’d—
Garm bayeth ghastful at Gnipa’s cave:
The fast must be loos’d and the Wolf fare free.
What aileth the Æsir? What aileth the Elves?
Thundereth all Jotunheim: the Æsir go to Thing.
The Dwarf-kind wail afore their doors of stone,
The rock-walls’ warders.—Wist ye yet, or what?
Hrym driveth from the east, holdeth shield on high.
Jormungand twisteth in Titan fury.
The Worm heaveth up the seas: screameth the Eagle:
Slitteth corpses Neb-pale: Nail-fare saileth.
A Keel fareth from the west: come must Muspell’s
Legions aboard of her, and Loki steereth.
Fare the evil wights with the Wolf all;
Amidst them is Byleist’s brother in their faring,
Surt from the south cometh, switch-bane in hand;
Blazeth the sun from the sword of the Death-God:
The granite cliffs clash, and the great gulfs sunder;
The Hell-dead walk the way of Hell, and the Heavens are riven—
Garm bayeth ghastful at Gnipa’s cave:
The fast must be loos’d and the Wolf fare free.”
For a minute after Biorn had ended there was dead quiet. Then that priest leapt up, proffering from his lips, higgledy-piggledy like water guggling out of a bottleneck, all manner of foul speech and blasphemy; out of which this much was apparent, that he would have the Danes do some mischief to Biorn. Till in the end one of the King’s men that was set beside the priest stood up and laid hold of him, strongly yet not to hurt him, and put him forth of the door. But the rest sat silent all, shamefaced, ill at ease, and after a little fell a-drinking again, yet with little jollity. But the King, with his great flat face corpse-livid even in the friendly firelight, gazed yet on Styrbiorn as if he beheld in him the very presence of Surt with flaming Sword, captaining the fiends in their onset on Valhalla.
VI
The Dane-King’s Daughter
The next day came Thyri the King’s daughter to Biorn and took him apart. “Why didst thou speak that bad song before the King yester-night?” said she.
Biorn, that had naught to say, held his peace.
“I know not what was there save thy song,” said she; “but the King my father was put in a mighty taking and hath slept not a wink the whole night through.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Biorn. “Yet ’tis oftener that which goeth in at the mouth hath suchlike force, not songs, which goeth in at the ear.”
“I cannot speak to thee,” said Thyri, “if thou wilt laugh.”
Biorn said, “I laugh no more, King’s daughter.” Thyri looked at him with her large eyes, a strange and shy look. She seemed ill at ease. Biorn thought he could see that she was come to him as to a friend in need,
