So Loki was brought low, and lay, firm bound With what were sinews of his murdered son, Upon the destined rocks, whereof the first Tortured his shoulders, the next tore his loins, And the last cut his knee-strings. Now the gods Had brought him his son Wali to behold Their judgment, and with Wali Narwi came, And their lamenting mother, long-despised, Sigyn; but Wali turned into a wolf And rent his brother Narwi limb from limb, And straightway bounded to a craggy ledge And howled. With sinews of such fratricide Loki, the Insulter, was enmeshed and chained, For the gods turned the flesh to heavy chains, And left him on a solitary cliff, Above the torrent, clamouring hoarsely down Beside the windy House of Many Doors, Where he had watched their coming, nor availed His ultimate flight, albeit suddenly He changed into a salmon in the foam. Now aspish poison dropped upon his brow From time to time, when faithful Sigyn took The slopping platter full of venom forth To pour away. Then with unshielded brows Loki received the slime of that long snake That Skadi tied above him. For each taunt Erst hurled by him at the high feasting gods, The exulting gods together drawn to feast In Oegir's crystal hall, a burning gout Fell. He cried shrilly, miserably writhed, Crisped anguished limbs in unimagined pain, And cursed his lords, who the more tortured him, Seeing that his jibes had been a part of truth, And truth is often satire fit to spoil Ev'n the serenity of glorious gods. So greatly now he writhed, so madly called, Earth with huge throes unto her midriff shook— (Men call this earthquake in their ignorance). But the great Aesïr, the Sustainers, high And very holy, had returned to heaven, And found its greenness and its splendours gone, A twilight fading redly in the streets Of Asgard town, as fades in some starved haunt Of earthly toil the day, when all the looms And every anvil fire has ceased to sing: The wheels are silent, the coal-ash turns grey, A thousand haggard workmen swarm the roads, Too piteous to seek drink, confused, ashamed, Walking midway the ruts, for now the wains And fetlocked horses no more strain along, And to starve fronts them, and their governors, Unread in ancient rede, unlettered fools, Have damned the runnels of the commonwealth With drift of catchwords. Not less miserably, Though grandlier far and for a different cause, After the punishment condign, returned The glorious gods to Asgard's darkening streets, Where all the gables nodded, touched with gloom, And a dull mildew through the rising wind Assailed, as on a battle-field, their sense And stirred foreboding terrible and new In minds still wrung by vengeance on that power, That Loki, that insulter, that vile chief Of spirit gaolers, that strong artizan Of traps and walls for prisoners divine, Him by whose innocent-seeming wit was slain, Balder the Beautiful. To golden beds The gods stole silent, too distraught to feast. |