It much resembled, as he thought, the sighs his breast exhaled:
He knew not it was Skada’s self, that through the forest blew
Behind her cloud: the whole wide world appear’d to him as new.
How dreadful was the change! now seem’d Heimkringlas dead indeed,
Since from its native soil was torn the life-renewing reed!
But it was not Iduna’s form, that Frey long’d to embrace,
But thee, o Gerda! scion fair of Jotun’s swarthy race.
As thus he sat immers’d in thought, sudden his eye survey’d
His sister Freya; there she stood in linen white array’d,
With silver ringlets, like a dame in the decline of life,