The dance-chant and the death-lock In battle-shock!-- The dance-chant and the death-lock! _O Fire!--O Fire! O Steel!--O Steel!..._
The Sword-dance, circling In a ring!-- The Sword-dance, circling! _O Fire! O Fire! O Steel! O Steel!..._
Sing the Slaughter-lover blue Broad and true! Sing the Slaughter-lover blue! _O Fire!--O Fire! O Steel!--O Steel!..._
Battle where the savage Sword Is sole Lord,-- Battle of the savage Sword! _O Fire!--O Fire! O Steel!--O Steel!..._
O Sword! mighty King! Battle-King! O Sword! mighty King!... _O Fire!--O Fire! O Steel!--O Steel!..._
Let the Rainbow's magic rays Round thee blaze!-- Let the Rainbow round thee blaze! _O Fire!--O Fire! O Steel!--O Steel! O Fire!--O Fire! O Steel and Fire! O Oak!--O Oak! O Earth!--O Waves! O Waves!--O Earth! O Earth and Oak!_
DEAR K.,--Charley Johnson's coming down to spend a week with me. I shall be soon enjoying his Rabelaisian mirth, and his Gargantuesque laughter. He is going to Havana, and I shall ask him to get, if possible, the music of the erotic mime-dance,--the Zamacueca of the Creoles.
I see they are offering prizes for a good opera. Why don't you compose an opera? I can suggest the most tremendous, colossal, Ragnarockian subject imaginable--knocks Wagner endwise and all the trilogies: "THE WOOING OF THE VIRGIN OF POJA," from the "Kalewala." The "Kalewala" is the only essentially _musical_ epopea I know of. Orpheus is a mere clumsy charlatan to Wainamoinen and the wooers. The incidents are more charmingly enormous than anything in the Talmud, Ramayana, or Mahabharata. O! the old woman who talks to the Moon!--and the wicked singer who turns all that hear him to stone!--and the phantoms created by magical chant!--and the songs that make the stars totter in the frosty sky!--and the melodies that melt the gates of iron! And then, too, the episode of the Eternal Smith, by whose art the blue vault of heaven was wrought into shape; and the weird sleigh-ride over the Frozen Sea; and the words at whose utterance "the waters of the great deep lifted a thousand heads to listen!" And the story of the Earth-giant, aroused by magical force from his slumber of innumerable years, to teach to the Magician the runes by which all things are created,--the enchanted songs by which the Beginning was made to Begin. If you have not read it, try to get a _prose_ translation: no poetical version can preserve the delightful goblinry and elfishness of the original, whereof the metre rings even as the ringing of a mighty harp.