THE LAY OF STARKÀTHER.
[The following lines are founded on the account given by Saxo-Grammaticus (Lib. VIII.) of the guilt, penitence, and death of Starkàther, a fabulous Scandinavian hero, famous throughout the North for his bodily strength and warlike achievements, as well as for his poetical genius, of which traces are still to be found in the metrical traditions and phraseology of his country. According to the old legend, the existence of Starkàther was prolonged for three lifetimes, in each of which he was doomed to commit some act of infamy; but this fiction has not here been followed out. Oehlenschläger's drama, bearing the name of this hero, has many beauties; but deviates widely from Saxo's story of his death.]
It was an aged man went forth with slow and tottering tread,
The frosts of many a Northland Yule lay thick upon his head;
A staff was in his outstretched hand, to lead him on his way,
And vainly rolled his faded eyes to find the light of day.
Yet in that ancient form was seen the pride of other years,
In ruined majesty and night the Hero there appears.
The awful brow, the ample breast, a shelter from the foe,
And there the massive weight of arm that dealt the deadly blow.
He stopped a passing stranger's steps, and thus his purpose told,—
"See here the twin swords by my side, and see this purse of gold;
Thy weapon choose to cope with One who should no longer live,
And by an easy slaughter earn the guerdon I would give.
"A hundred winters o'er my soul have shed their gathering gloom,
And still I seek, but seek in vain, an honourable tomb;
With friendly enmity consent to quench this lingering breath,
And give, to crown a warrior's life, one boon—a warrior's death.
"Of matchless might and fearless soul, with powers of song sublime,
I spread afar my name and fame in every Gothic clime;
Those godlike gifts were treasured long from blot and blemish clear,
But one dark act of fraudful guilt bedimmed my bright career.
"When Olo sat, the people's choice, in Sealand's kingly seat,
And trampled liegemen and the laws beneath his tyrant feet,
His nobles placed this glittering hoard within my yielding hand,
And bade me rid them of a rule that wide enslaved the land.