Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/122

90  On Rykdal’s holy Doom-stone
 * He slew to Frey his cow.

To bounteous Frey he slew her;
 * To Skuld, the younger Norn,

Who watches over birth and death,
 * He gave her calf unborn.

And his little gold-haired daughter
 * Took up the sprinkling-rod,

And smeared with blood the temple
 * And the wide lips of the god.

Hoarse below, the winter water
 * Ground its ice blocks o’er and o’er;

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,
 * Rose and fell along the shore.

The red torch of the Jokul,
 * Aloft in icy space,

Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones
 * And the statue’s carven face.

And closer round and grimmer
 * Beneath its baleful light

The Jotun shapes of mountains
 * Came crowding through the night.

The gray-haired Hersir trembled
 * As a flame by wind is blown;

A weird power moved his white lips,
 * And their voice was not his own!

“The Æsir thirst!” he muttered;
 * “The gods must have more blood

Before the tun shall blossom
 * Or fish shall fill the flood.

“The Æsir thirst and hunger,
 * And hence our blight and ban;

The mouths of the strong gods water
 * For the flesh and blood of man!

“Whom shall we give the strong ones?
 * Not warriors, sword on thigh;

But let the nursling infant
 * And bedrid old man die.”

“So be it!” cried the young men,
 * “There needs nor doubt nor parle.”

But, knitting hard his red brows,
 * In silence stood the Jarl.

A sound of woman’s weeping
 * At the temple door was heard,

But the old men bowed their white heads,
 * And answered not a word.

Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla,
 * A Vala young and fair,

Sang softly, stirring with her breath
 * The veil of her loose hair.

She sang: “The winds from Alfheim
 * Bring never sound of strife;

The gifts for Frey the meetest
 * Are not of death, but life.

“He loves the grass-green meadows,
 * The grazing kine’s sweet breath;

He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,
 * Your gifts that smell of death.

“No wrong by wrong is righted,
 * No pain is cured by pain;

The blood that smokes from Doom-rings
 * Falls back in redder rain.

“The gods are what you make them,
 * As earth shall Asgard prove;

And hate will come of hating,
 * And love will come of love.

“Make dole of skyr and black bread
 * That old and young may live;

And look to Frey for favor
 * When first like Frey you give.

“Even now o’er Njord’s sea-meadows
 * The summer dawn begins:

The tun shall have its harvest,
 * The fiord its glancing fins.”

Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell:
 * “By Gimli and by Hel,

O Vala of Thingvalla,
 * Thou singest wise and well!

“Too dear the Æsir’s favors
 * Bought with our children’s lives;

Better die than shame in living
 * Our mothers and our wives.

“The full shall give his portion
 * To him who hath most need;

Of curdled skyr and black bread,
 * Be daily dole decreed.”

He broke from off his neck-chain
 * Three links of beaten gold;