John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Narrative and Legendary PoemsThe Dole of Jarl Thorkell
T
And racked with fever-pain;
The frozen fiords were fishless,
The earth withheld her grain.
Before them come and go,
And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon
From west to east sailed slow!
At Yule-time made his vow;
On Rykdal’s holy Doom-stone
He slew to Frey his cow.
To Skuld, the younger Norn,
Who watches over birth and death,
He gave her calf unborn.
Took up the sprinkling-rod,
And smeared with blood the temple
And the wide lips of the god.
Ground its ice-blocks o’er and o’er;
Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,
Rose and fell along the shore.
Aloft in icy space,
Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones
And the statue’s carven face.
Beneath its baleful light
The Jotun shapes of mountains
Came crowding through the night.
As a flame by wind is blown;
A weird power moved his white lips,
And their voice was not his own!
“The gods must have more blood
Before the tun shall blossom
Or fish shall fill the flood.
And hence our blight and ban;
The mouths of the strong gods water
For the flesh and blood of man!
Not warriors, sword on thigh;
But let the nursling infant
And bedrid old man die.”
“There needs nor doubt nor parle.”
But, knitting hard his red brows,
In silence stood the Jarl.
At the temple door was heard,
But the old men bowed their white heads,
And answered not a word.
A Vala young and fair,
Sang softly, stirring with her breath
The veil of her loose hair.
Bring never sound of strife;
The gifts for Frey the meetest
Are not of death, but life.
The grazing kine’s sweet breath;
He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,
Your gifts that smell of death.
No pain is cured by pain;
The blood that smokes from Doom-rings
Falls back in redder rain.
As earth shall Asgard prove;
And hate will come of hating,
And love will come of love.
That old and young may live;
And look to Frey for favor
When first like Frey you give.
The summer dawn begins:
The tun shall have its harvest,
The fiord its glancing fins.”
“By Gimli and by Hel,
O Vala of Thingvalla,
Thou singest wise and well!
Bought with our children’s lives;
Better die than shame in living
Our mothers and our wives.
To him who hath most need;
Of curdled skyr and black bread,
Be daily dole decreed.”
Three links of beaten gold;
And each man, at his bidding,
Brought gifts for young and old.
And daughters fed their sires,
And Health sat down with Plenty
Before the next Yule fires.
The Doom-ring still remains;
But the snows of a thousand winters
Have washed away the stains.
Have found their twilight dim;
And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
The Vala sang of Him!