Those hands uplifted, or to curse or smite,62
Fold o'er a daughter's head their tremulous joy!
Oh, to the natural worship of delight,
How came the monstrous dogma—"To destroy!"
Sure, Heaven foreshow'd its gospel to the wild
In earth's first bond—the father and the child!
While words yet fail'd the bliss of that embrace,63
The muttering priests, unmoved, each other eyed;
Then to the threshold came their measured pace:—
"Depart, Profane," their Pagan pontiff cried,
"Depart, Profane, too near your steps have trod
To altars darken'd with an angry God.
"Dire are the omens! Skulda rides the clouds,64
Her sisters tremble[3] at the Urdar spring;
The hour demands us—shun the veil that shrouds
The Priests, the God, the Victim, and the King."
Shuddering, the crowds retreat, and whispering low,
Spread the contagious terrors where they go.
Then the stern Elders came to Crida's side,65
And from their lock'd embrace unclasp'd his hands:
"Lo," said their chieftain, "how the gods provide
Themselves the offering which the shrine demands!
By Odin's son be Odin's voice obey'd;
The lost is found—behold, and yield the maid!"
As when some hermit saint, in the old day66
Of the soul's giant war with Solitude,
From some bright dream which rapt his life away
Amidst the spheres, unclosed his eyes and view'd,
'Twixt sleep and waking, vaguely horrible,
The grisly tempter of the gothic hell;
So on the father's bliss abruptly broke67
The dreadful memory of his dismal god;
And, his eyes pleading ere his terrors spoke,
Look'd round the brows of that foul brotherhood.
Then his big voice came weak and strangely mild,
"What mean those words?—why glare ye on my child?
"Do ye not know her? Elders, she is mine,—68
My flesh, my blood, mine age's youngest-born!
Why are ye mute? Why point to yonder shrine?
Ay,"—and here haughty with the joy of scorn,
He raised his front.—"Ay, be the voice obey'd!
Priests, ye forget,—it was a Christian maid!"
He ceased and laugh'd aloud, as humbled fell69
Those greedy looks, and mutteringly replied
Faint voices, "True, so said the Oracle!"
When the Arch-Elder, with an eager stride
Reach'd child and sire, and cried, "See Crida, there,
On the maid's breast the cross that Christians wear!"
Those looks, those voices, thrill'd through Geneviève,70
With fears as yet vague, shapeless, undefined:
"Father," she murmur'd, "Father, let us leave
These dismal precincts; how those eyes unkind
Freeze to my soul; sweet father, let us go;
My heart to thine would speak! why frown'st thou so?"
"Tear from thy breast that sign, unhappy one!71
Sign to thy country's wrathful gods accurst!
Back, priests of Odin, I am Odin's son,
And she my daughter; in my war-shield nurst,
Rear'd at your altars! Trample down the sign,
O child, and say—the Saxon's God is mine!"