“I will go, for we need him in war,
And without him we struggle and die;
I will put on the armour he bore
And gird on his sword to my thigh;
I will sit by and say, ‘I am Thor.’
“Perchance when he opens his eyes,
Shorn of his own armour-plate,
Smitten with rage and surprise,
Burning with anger and hate,
He will burst from the bed where he lies.
“Swift as the kiss of the fire,
Knowledge shall flash to his brain,
And the thought of his past self inspire
His spirit with valour again,
Till he shatter the bonds of desire.”
So Balder, the fairest of all,
And purest of gods by the throne,
Went from the heavenly hall
Into the darkness alone,
To loosen the god from his thrall.
Black was the charger he rode,
Winged, and its eye-balls of fire;
From mountain to mountain it trode,
Spurning the valleys as mire,
Till it sprang into air with its load.
Then swift, with its neck side-curled,
Half hid in the smoke of its breath,
Upward it bounded, and hurled
Volleys and splinters of death
From the fire of its hoofs on the world.
The moon-lady leaned from her car
And beheld the fierce course of the god,
For, as though with the birth of a star,
A fire track as straight as a rod
Burnt in the heavens afar.
Then she trembled and sickened with fear,
Till her face grew as white as the mist
When at day-dawn the stars disappear,
And her body did coil and untwist
Like a serpent’s folds caught in a weir.
Her heart was a fire that was spent,
Her lips could not utter a charm,
And she cowered from his sight as he went,
While Balder flew by without harm,
’Neath the shield of a pure intent.
He came to the moon-lady’s bower,
And girded the sword to his thigh,
And put on the cincture of power,
Unbound from the god lying by,
Nor waited a day nor an hour;