THORDIS I see a tree just bursting into flower.
EGIL Is not it beautiful?
THORDIS ’Tis ravishing.
EGIL Last winter, had you passed, you might have seen it Writhing its frozen limbs there like a thing Accurst, all pinched and scrambled by the pangs Of screaming winds; you would have shrunk from it Beneath the verdurous pine, in whose sad boughs The same winds sung like voices of tuned lyres.
THORDIS It may be so.
EGIL Yet now behold it, now! A pale-rose pyre of fragrance and of flame, Wherein, like sacrificial spirits, sit The tawny and vermilion birds, and strike Their silvery chants in unison, and hung Amid the tangled bloom, in murmurous choirs, The blazing gold bees shrill their mellow horns. Look, Thordis, look again! If you were Freyja, Herself, goddess of spring, which would you choose For shelter now, and joy?
THORDIS [Gazing at him.] Ah me!
EGIL If spring— If spring and the sweet south can so transform, What cannot love? Your warmth, your breath, your soul, Soft on my numbness, my deformity, Breathed, and I sprung—a burning tree of bloom— Beside you. Have you eyes for flights unseen? Hearing for choirs unheard? Here, too, beside you Fierce swarms of golden fancies work in song The fecund pollen of my passion, here A thousand bird-wing’d visions nest them down Into the heart of me, to chant your praise. You that have so transformed me, you repulse me Now?
[Enter right, in the background, Arfi; he pauses unseen.]
THORDIS Take your eyes from mine.