So would I live this life’s brief span, great dead,
As ye once lived it, with an iron will,
A heart of steel to conquer, a mind fed
On richest hopes and purposes, until
Well pleased ye set for me a royal throne,
And welcome as confederate with your own
The soul gone from me on my dying bed.
THOR.
Here stood the great god Thor,
There he planted his foot,
And the whole world shook, from the shore
To the circle of mountains God put
For its crown in the days of yore.
The waves of the sea uprose,
The trees of the wood were uptorn,
Down from the Alps’ crown of snows
The glacial avalanche borne
Thundered at daylight’s close.
But the moon-lady curled at his feet,
Like a smoke which will not stir,
When the summer hills swoon with the heat,
Till his passion was centred on her,
And the shame of his yielding grew sweet.
Empty the moon-lady’s car,
And idly it floated away,
Tipped up as she left it afar,
Pale in the red death of day,
With its nether lip turned to a star.
Fearful the face of the god,
Stubborn with sense of his power,
The seas would roll back at his nod
And the thunder-voiced thunder-clouds lower,
While the lightning he broke as a rod.
Fearful his face was in war,
Iron with fixed look of hate,
Through the battle-smoke thick and the roar
He strode with invincible weight
Till the legions fell back before Thor.
But the white thing that curled at his feet
Rose up slowly beside him like mist,
Indefinite, wan, incomplete,
Till she touched the rope veins on his wrist
And love pulsed to his heart with a beat.