Here banished found they mischief-making Loke Beneath the faint arch of young Bifrost sate, His foxy face between large, naked knees; Deep, wily eyes fixed on the darting fish In seeming thought, but aye one corner wan Flashed at the Asas where they clustered fair, Soft on a mountain's aged locks of snow, Their tawny tresses ruddy in the wind.
Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth:-- Red was his beard forked with the livid light, That clings among the tempest's locks of bale, Or fillets her tumultuous temples black. And drops with wild confusion on the hills; And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice, His sullen words were strained, and when he spake The oldest forests bowed their crowns of leaves, And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb.
As when, the horror of the spear-shock o'er, And all the plains and skies of Thule are gorged With gore and screams of those that fight or die, The Valkyries in their far-glimmering helms Flash from the windy sunset's mists of red Unto the chalk-faced dead,--whose beaten casques And sea-swol'n shields, with sapless, red-hewn limbs, Wave 'mid the dead-green billows, stormy-browed, That roar along the Baltic's wintry coast, And wail amid the iron-circled coves,-- To cull dead heroes for the hall of shields,-- Where yells the toast and rings the tournament,-- A dumbness falls upon the shattered field; The clinging billows 'mid the restless dead Moan o'er their wide-stretched eyes and glassy sleep; And all the blood-blurred banners, gustless, dark Hard ashen faces waiting for the choice.
The thunderer did Loke shrewd ensnare, Incensed for pristine evil wrought on him. When erst dark Loke deflowered his spouse, fair Sif The blue eyed, of her golden, baby locks. Him the Asas dragged beneath a burning mount Into a cavern black, by earthquakes rent When Earth was young to heave her spawn of Trolls, The vermin which engendered in the corpse Of Ymer huge, whose flesh did make the world. Here where the stars ne'er shone, nor nature's strains Of legendary woodlands, peaks, and streams Ere came, they pinned him supine to the rocks, Whose frigid touch filed at his brittle bones, And tore a groan from lips of quiv'ring froth, That made the warty reptiles cold and huge Hiss from their midnight lairs and blaze great eyes.