Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/139

Rh Nine days, nine nights, toward the northern ice,

Through valleys deep-ingulfed with roaring streams.

And he will reach on the tenth morn a bridge

Which spans with golden arches Giall's stream,

Not Bifrost, but that bridge a damsel keeps,

Who tells the passing troops of dead their way

To the low shore of ghosts, and Hela's realm.

And she will bid him northward steer his course.

Then he will journey through no lighted land,

Nor see the sun arise, nor see it set;

But he must ever watch the northern Bear,

Who from her frozen height with jealous eye

Confronts the Dog and Hunter in the south,

And is alone not dipt in ocean's stream;

And straight he will come down to ocean's strand,—

Ocean, whose watery ring infolds the world,

And on whose marge the ancient giants dwell.

But he will reach its unknown northern shore,

Far, far beyond the outmost giant's home,

At the chinked fields of ice, the wastes of snow.

And he must fare across the dismal ice

Northward, until he meets a stretching wall

Barring his way, and in the wall a grate.

But then he must dismount, and on the ice

Tighten the girths of Sleipner, Odin's horse,

And make him leap the grate, and come within.

And he will see stretch round him Hela's realm,

The plains of Niflheim, where dwell the dead,

And hear the roaring of the streams of hell.

And he will see the feeble, shadowy tribes,

And Balder sitting crowned, and Hela's throne.

Then must he not regard the wailful ghosts

Who all will flit, like eddying leaves, around;

But he must straight accost their solemn queen,