Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/169

Rh The golden-crested cock shall sound alarm,

And his black brother-bird from hence reply,

And bucklers clash, and spears begin to pour,—

Longing will stir within my breast, though vain.

But not to me so grievous as, I know,

To other gods it were, is my enforced

Absence from fields where I could nothing aid;

For I am long since weary of your storm

Of carnage, and find, Hermod, in your life

Something too much of war and broils, which make

Life one perpetual fight, a bath of blood.

Mine eyes are dizzy with the arrowy hail;

Mine ears are stunned with blows, and sick for calm.

Inactive therefore let me lie, in gloom,

Unarmed, inglorious: I attend the course

Of ages, and my late return to light,

In times less alien to a spirit mild,

In new-recovered seats, the happier day."

He spake, and the fleet Hermod thus replied:—

"Brother, what seats are these, what happier day?

Tell me, that I may ponder it when gone."

And the ray-crownèd Balder answered him,—

"Far to the south, beyond the blue, there spreads

Another heaven, the boundless. No one yet

Hath reached it. There hereafter shall arise

The second Asgard, with another name.

Thither, when o'er this present earth and heavens

The tempest of the latter days hath swept,

And they from sight have disappeared and sunk,

Shall a small remnant of the gods repair;

Hoder and I shall join them from the grave.

There re-assembling we shall see emerge

From the bright ocean at our feet an earth

More fresh, more verdant than the last, with fruits