THOR. O Balder, hear me!
Hear why I come, and if thou wish’st for rescue,
Then heed a friend’s, a father’s last, last warning!
Wondering at thy infatuation, troubled
By threatening, now no longer dark forebodings,
By panic seiz’d, press’d by unwonted sadness,
I left these hills, and thunder-peals announced me
In Asgaard, every eye my trouble notic’d;
Straightway around me stream’d the eldest Aser,
Each first would know, what grief, or rather terror,
Press’d down my eye. But straight Allfather made me
A sign: he blushes, Balder, at thy weakness!
He bade me keep it, whilst we could, a secret,
And question first once more the ancient Mimer.
I question’d him, and murky fate’s explorer
Thus answer’d: “If the sun (ah, hear and tremble,
And save thee, whilst thou canst!) if it to-morrow,
When by its glories yonder hills are brighten’d,
Which oft have echoed back the half-god’s wailings,
Behold him yet in love and yet rejected,
Then likewise it beholds the spear which slays him,
And Odin’s tears and all the Aser’s sorrow!”
BALDER. Time presses, then. Excuse me, Thor; I hasten
With tears to soften Nanna’s noble bosom,
To move her with my prayer, and, lowly kneeling,
My doom demand, be’t life or death; for quickly
Shall Balder’s fate disclose itself. [He goes.
THOR (whilst he looks after him with compassion). Ah, madman!
Headlong thou hurriest to meet destruction!
ACT THE THIRD.
It is dark night. The storm howls among the rocks. Sometimes it lightens and thunders, and the bears bellow here and there in the forest.
HOTHER (sitting upon a rock unarmed and in a dejected attitude).
The rocks are reeling,
When storms are roaring,
And thunders pealing,
I feel no fright!
What I’m enduring
Is wilder, stranger
Than thunder’s anger
Or tempests might.
Welcome, thou night! O darkness thick! how friendly,
Compassionately hid’st thou me from Hother!
From him, the weak, the overcome, the fallen!
Come, then, embrace me, Hœtheim’s murky princess!
With all thy horrors dark, thou foe of gladness!
Ah, come! conceal the feeble, shiver’d weapon!
Cover the gloomy rock where I— Ha! thunder
Annihilate thee, accursed thought, that darest
Disturb the Skoldung where to rest he’s flung him!
But I may breathe it to the night, and Hœtheim
I may entrust with Hother’s ignominy.
Ha! hear it, night! and in thy depths conceal it!
There is a rock—a gloomy one—a horrid,
For ugly demons swarm upon its summit,
And dragons nestle in its murky caverns:
There did I fall, and with me fell my honour.
There knelt I powerless, and my life accepted!
Now am I calm, for I no more behold it;
Nor yet behold the proud, the noble foeman,
Nor yet my Nanna’s cheek, o’erspread with blushes;
Nor yet the burning, hated tears which rescued,
Which purchased Hother from triumphant Balder!
Ha! storm, thou sinkest! Howl and whoop around me!
Peal, thunders, peal! and drown the cruel echo
Of dastard prayer, of Nanna’s intercession!
Life of my Nanna,
Thy breath doth kill,
Its sweet lamenting,
One stroke preventing,
With many, with many
This breast doth fill.
Thou lovest me! Ha! weak, enamour’d Nanna!
Thou lovest Hother’s life, but not thy Hother.
How cold, how cruel to his name, his honour!
But I—I too was cruel! I accus’d thee—
Beloved Nanna, at thy feet full quickly
Hother’s best blood shall wash away that insult!