"Tell him to set upon the tallest pine42
Keen watch, and wait, until from Carduel's tower,
High o'er the wood a starry light shall shine;
Not that the signal, though it nears the hour,
But when the light shall change its hues, and form
One orb, blood-dyed, as sunsets red with storm;
"Then, while the foe their camp unguarded leave,43
And round our walls their tides tempestuous roll,
To yon wood pile, the Saxon fortress, cleave;
Be Odin's Idol the Deliverer's goal.
Say to the King, 'In that funereal fane
Complete thy mission, and thy guide regain!'"
While spoke the seer, the Teuton's garb of mail44
The son of Faul had donn'd, and bending now,
He kiss'd his father's cheek.—"And if I fail,"
He murmur'd, "leave thy blessing on my brow,
My father!" Then the convert of the wild
Look'd up to Heaven, and mutely bless'd his child.
"Thou wend with me, proud sire of dauntless men,"45
Resumed the seer:—"On thine arm let my age
Lean, as shall thine upon their children!"—Then
The loreless savage—the all-gifted sage,
By the strong bonds of will and heart allied;
Went towards the towers of Carduel side by side.
To Crida's camp the swift song rushing flies;46
Round Odin's shrine wild Priests, rune muttering,
Task the weird omens hateful to the skies;
Pale by the idol stands the grey-hair'd king;
And, from without, the unquiet armament
Booms in hoarse surge, its chafing discontent.
For in defeat (when first that multitude47
Shrunk from a foe, and fled the Cymrian sword)
The pride of man the wrath of gods had view'd;
Religious horror smote the palsied horde;
The field refused, till priest, and seid, and charm,
Explore the offence, and wrath divine disarm.
All day, all night, glared fires, dark-red and dull48
With mystic gums, before the Teuton god,
And waved o'er runes which Mimer's trunkless skull
Had whisper'd Odin—the Diviner's rod,
And rank with herbs which baleful odours breathed,
The bubbling hell-juice in the cauldron seethed.
Now towards that hour when into coverts dank49
Slinks back the wolf; when to her callow brood
Veers through still boughs, the owl; when from the bank
The glow-worm wanes; when heaviest droops the wood,
Ere the faint twitter of the earliest lark,—
Ere dawn creeps chill and timorous through the dark;
About that hour, of all the dreariest,50
A flame leaps up from the dull fire's repose,
And shoots weird sparks along the runes, imprest
On stone and elm-bark, ranged in ninefold rows;
The vine's deep flush the purpling seid assumes,
And the strong venom coils in maddening fumes.
Pale grew the elect Diviner's alter'd brows;51
Swell'd the large veins, and writhed the foaming lips;
And as some swart and fateful planet glows
Athwart the disc to which it brings eclipse;
So that strange Pythian madness, whose control
Seems half to light and half efface the soul,