Blooms of the Berry

by Madison Julius Cawein

They found him sitting nigh a mountain-force,
Which flashing roared from crags of ribbed snow,
Lamenting strange and weird in rushing notes
Of the old Strömkarl, who therein smote a harp
And sang in mystic syllables of runes.
For 'tis the wild man's harp and voice you hear:
He sits behind the crackling cataract
Within a grotto dim of mist and foam,
His long, thin beard, white as the flying spray
Flung to the midnight in a sounding cave
By the blind fish that leap against the winds;
Gemmed with the large dews of the cataract,
Swings in the sucking breeze, and swinging beats
Time to his harp's strains quav'ring soft and sad
Beneath the talons of his pale, lean hand.
And all the waters, leaping, tingling shake
Like shivering stars within the frozen skies,
When as the Giants of Frost rule o'er the deep,
And nip their buds with fingers hoar of ice.

Here banished found they mischief-making Loke
Beneath the faint arch of young Bifrost sate,
His foxy face between large, naked knees;
Deep, wily eyes fixed on the darting fish
In seeming thought, but aye one corner wan
Flashed at the Asas where they clustered fair,
Soft on a mountain's aged locks of snow,
Their tawny tresses ruddy in the wind.

Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth:—
Red was his beard forked with the livid light,
That clings among the tempest's locks of bale,
Or fillets her tumultuous temples black.
And drops with wild confusion on the hills;
And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice,
His sullen words were strained, and when he spake
The oldest forests bowed their crowns of leaves,
And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed
Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb.

As when, the horror of the spear-shock o'er,
And all the plains and skies of Thule are gorged
With gore and screams of those that fight or die,
The Valkyries in their far-glimmering helms
Flash from the windy sunset's mists of red
Unto the chalk-faced dead,—whose beaten casques
And sea-swol'n shields, with sapless, red-hewn limbs,
Wave 'mid the dead-green billows, stormy-browed,
That roar along the Baltic's wintry coast,
And wail amid the iron-circled coves,—
To cull dead heroes for the hall of shields,—
Where yells the toast and rings the tournament,—
A dumbness falls upon the shattered field;
The clinging billows 'mid the restless dead
Moan o'er their wide-stretched eyes and glassy sleep;
And all the blood-blurred banners, gustless, dark
Hard ashen faces waiting for the choice.

The thunderer did Loke shrewd ensnare,
Incensed for pristine evil wrought on him.
When erst dark Loke deflowered his spouse, fair Sif
The blue eyed, of her golden, baby locks.
Him the Asas dragged beneath a burning mount
Into a cavern black, by earthquakes rent
When Earth was young to heave her spawn of Trolls,
The vermin which engendered in the corpse
Of Ymer huge, whose flesh did make the world.
Here where the stars ne'er shone, nor nature's strains
Of legendary woodlands, peaks, and streams
Ere came, they pinned him supine to the rocks,
Whose frigid touch filed at his brittle bones,
And tore a groan from lips of quiv'ring froth,
That made the warty reptiles cold and huge
Hiss from their midnight lairs and blaze great eyes.

Lone in the night he heard the white bear roar
From some green-glancing berge that stemmed dark seas
With all its moan of torrents foaming down
The ice-crags of its crystal mountain crests.
And 'neath the firry steep a wild swine shrieked,
And fought the snarling wolf; his midriff ripped
With spume-flaked ivories where the moss was brok'n
Far down within the horror of a gorge;
And once he saw souls of dead mortals whirl
With red-strown hair within the Arctic skies,
And all his stolid face was eddied o'er
By one faint smile, which grimly flash'd and pass'd,
And he knew not its stonyness had changed.
And all was rock above him, rock beneath:
And all the clammy crawling things that spat
Black venom at him from deep dens of rock,
And that swart boundless flood of flowing death,
Which with its sooty spray clung to a cliff
And slid beside his marble gaze, to him
Were as the rock that curled above and hung;
Were as the rock that spread beneath and pierced;
For as to the blind to him were lidless eyes.

And pity 'twas not darker than it was,
And crammed with terrors populous as Hel's
Or that cursed dome of corpses, Naastrand dire,
Whose roofs and walls of yawning serpents slick
Hang writhing down, flat heads—reed-beds of snakes—
From whose red, hissing fangs flow slimy streams
Of blist'ring venom, gath'ring to a flood,
Wherein the basest shades eternal wade
And feel the anguish crawling down the neck,
Or glue the hair, or glut the dull, dead ear,
Or choke the blasted eye until it swims
In lurid pain and blazes 'gainst the source.
The roar of waters and the wail of pines
When whirlwinds roll the granite bowlders down
From flinty crags of storm to bellowing seas—
On noisome winds the howls of torture roll,
And rising die, cause the live dome to writhe,
And swift pour down a tempest steep of woe.

Huge Skade, of Winter daughter, giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above Loke's head,
So that the blistering slaver might splash down
Upon his chalky face, and torture him,—
For so the Asas willed for his vast crimes.

But Loke's wife, Sigin, endured not this,
And brooked not to behold her husband's pain.
She sate herself beside his writhen limbs,
And held a cup to cull the venomed dew
Which flamed the scowling blackness as it fell.
To him she spake, who swelled his breast and groaned
E'en as some mighty sea, when 'neath its waves
The huge leviathan by whalers chased,—
Cleaving thick waters in his spinning flight,
The barbèd harpoon feasting on his life,—
Rolls up pale mounded billows o'er black fins
Far in the North Atlantic's sounding seas:—

"O Loke! lock those wide-drawn eyes of thine,
And let white silver-lidded slumber fall
In the soft utterance of my low speech!
And I will flutter all my amber curls
To cast wind currents o'er thy pallid brow!—
Drink deepest sleep, for, see, I catch thy doom!—
So pale thy face which glimmers thro' the night!
So pale! and knew I death as mortals know
I'd say that he mysterious had on thee
Laid hands of talons and so slain thy soul!
So still! and all the night bears down my heart!
So pale!—and sleep is lost to thee and me!—
Sleep, that were welcome in this heavy gloom!—
It clings to me like pestilential fogs!
I seem but clodded filth and float in filth!
It chokes my words and claws them from my tongue
To sound as dull confusèd as the boom
Heard thro' the stagnant earth when armies meet
With ring of war-ax on the brazen helms,
And all the mountains clash unto the sound
Of shocking spears that splinter on gray ore!
For by dead banks of stone my words are yelled
While yet they touch the tongue to grasp the thought;
And all the creatures huddled in their holes
Creep forth to glare and hiss them back again!
Yet, for thy love, O Loke, could I brave
All trebled horrors that wise Odin may
Heap on, and, suff'ring, love thee all the more!