Page:The Elder Edda and the Younger Edda - tr. Thorpe - 1907.djvu/99



9. I will give thee my steed, which can bear thee through the dusk, flickering flame, and that sword, which will itself brandish, if he is bold who raises it.

10. Dark it is without, 'tis time, I say, for us to go across the misty fells, over the Thursar's land: we shall both return, or the all-potent Jotun will seize us both. Skirnir rides to Jotunheim, to Gymir's mansion, where fierce dogs were chained at the gate of the enclosure that was round Gymir's hall. He rides on to where a cowherd was sitting on a mound, and says to him:

11. Tell me, cowherd! as on the mound thou sittest, and watchest all the ways, how I to the speech may come, of the young maiden, for Gymir's dogs?

12. Either thou art death-doomed, or thou art a departed one. Speech wilt thou ever lack with the good maid of Gymir.

13. Better choices than to whine there are for him who is prepared to die: for one day was my age decreed, and my whole life determined.

14. What is that sound of sounds, which I now sounding hear within our dwelling? The earth is shaken, and with it all the house of Gymir trembles. 73