FREYJA To greet my lover’s kindred. Were it not well?
BALDUR Oh, would it were! Look not; this kin is monstrous.
FREYJA Is it not a god as we?
BALDUR It is a god, Freyja, but not as we.—It is the wolf-god, Lord of the dumb and kithless wild, that live To breed and kill their forms of dreadful beauty— A vacant sacrifice to him: the doe, That stills all night her knocking heart, to hear The wood-cat’s footfall, breathes mute prayer to Fenris; The frothing stag, that blazons the black boar With gules of death, bruits hymns to Fenris; yet Their pangs assuage him not, for he himself Remains the abject deity of lust, His rites, the stretched claw and the stiffened mane; His priest—a sated fang; his altar—fear.
FREYJA But why makes he his sanctuary thus Lonely in desolation?
BALDUR ’Tis the will Of Odin. Ask no more. This cleft he chose Wherein to hide the secret woe of the world, That never thou shouldst look upon its face.
FREYJA
I?
BALDUR Thou, O maiden! Thou art the hope of the world.
FENRIS Freyja!