Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BALDUR THE BEAUTIFUL: THE JOURNEY TO HEL, by GRACE DENIO LITCHFIELD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BALDUR THE BEAUTIFUL: THE JOURNEY TO HEL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The aesir's chorus / fast! Ride fast!
Last Line: And silence held its breath for what should come.
Subject(s): Goddesses & Gods; Memory; Mythology; Travel; Journeys; Trips


THE ÆSIR'S CHORUS

FAST! Ride fast!
Storm rides with thee!
The shrieking blast
Thy bugle be,
The long slant rain
Of the hurricane
Thy javelin.
The race begin!

Be the swiftest star
Thy chariot wheel;
The lightning's bar
Step for thy heel;
Yon comet wear
To plume thy hair;
'Mid crash and din
The tilt begin!

Ride fast! Ride well!
Death jousts with thee—
The Queen of Hel
Thine enemy.
Pay utmost toll
For Baldur's soul.
Or die! Or win!
The fight begin!

Sleipnir sped on. With his first mighty leap,
Asgard, the bright-built city, silver-walled,
Shone faintly from the distance, like a gem
Lost in the gloom; Bifröst, the Rainbow Bridge,
With burning central rib of ruby fire,
No more was than a smoking shade; Midgard,
A pallor sketched against the dimness. On
And on rushed Sleipnir, every beat of hoof
A lightning flash, a whirlwind every breath;
And high upon him, straight as masted pine,
Hermod, with brow that bent nor right nor left,
And proud eyes unaffrighted, while the stars,
Told off like milestones, measured one by one
His course through space.
Now was the outmost sphere
Only a golden memory dissolved
In nothingness. His eye where e'er it fell
Found black, bleak, bitter night—a darkness fierce,
Defiant, treacherous, before advance
Retreating as a wave retreats, to close
In after with an all-engulfing rush
And drown resistance—darkness horrible,
Massed here and yon in denser blurrings—vague
Colossal shapings supernatural,
Ungodly and unhuman—ambushed fiends,
Plotting enormities.
More swift and more,
Fleeter than wind, than time, than thought itself,
Sleipnir with Hermod raced adown the dark:
Nine timeless days fled down the frozen deep—
Nine days wherein no sun was, midnights all,
Where was no moon, nor any glint of star,
Ninefold more bitter grown each sequent hour.
Caparisoned in sheeted ice the horse:
Congealed to opals every geyser breath:
And on his back Hermod, a marble god
White as the wind-whipped foam, his plumèd head
Held high as light on beacon tower, his eyes
Flinging their challenge fearless on to Hel.

Nine days he rode—a measureless time of dread
Unfathomable. Then faintly gleamed at last
Across the blotted darkness, like a thread
Swung from a spider's loom, the Bridge of Gjöll,
Spanning Death's turbid river in an arch
Of tenuous gold; there twenty leagues below,
The mad, black billows, torn with ghastly pangs,
Flow whence none know nor whither, flinging far
Their jetty spume upon the quavering air.
Straight o'er the slender scintillating line
Flew Sleipnir, and each hoofbeat on the gold
Crashed like a falling tower. At the noise
Up rose the warder maiden, Modgurdur,
Unmatched for comeliness and strength. Amazed,
Hermod she saw, and called to him with voice
Like rush of mingling waters. "Who art thou
That, living, ridest sole upon the Bridge,
Which, yester, five score dead men serried crossed,
And shook it less than thou?"
Nor right nor left
Looked Hermod, nor drew rein, but dropped a word
As sea-gulls, soaring, drop a loosened plume.
"For Baldur's sake I, Hermod, ride the Way
Of Death. Hast seen him pass?"
"Yea, verily.
It was as Heaven had lightened in my face."

"What way went he?"
She signed with lifted arm,
White-gleaming as 'twixt flying clouds by night
Shimmers the Milky Way. "Northward, to Hel.
Yet tarry thou, I prithee." Honey-sweet
And warm her breath stole through the gloom. But left
Nor right looked Hermod, nor drew rein. And on
Swept Sleipnir, fronting a blast whereto all winds
That yet had blown were but an idle draught,
Till, on the farther verge of that abyss
Whose bottom is the space beyond the stars,
Loomed up, immense, appalling, mountain high,
And barbed with poisoned swords that fouled the air,
The hideous, brazen, thrice-barred gates of Hel.

Down flung him Hermod, tightened girth and bit,
Laughed out, sprang reckless up, once and again
Cried Baldur's name; then, as an eagle soars
And swoops, so Sleipnir with gigantic vault
Cleared the vast pile, nor grazed the topmost blade,
And rooted stood within the drear domain
Of Death, each strong limb quaking. Down from his back
Leapt Hermod, with triumphant shout that ere
His foot attained the sod was cut in twain
Like a snapt harp-string. Silent then and dumb
Beside his sweating, palpitating horse
He stood at gaze, unknowing what he saw,
And for a space the semblance felt of fear.

Cavernous gloom, like midnight filtering
Through hollowed ice, cloaked all the desolate place
In mystery of impenetrable shade,
Chill with a cankered damp unpurged by sun,
A dark no dawn should morrow, in whose hold
Ambiguous and indeterminate,
Lurked all imaginable chance of ill—
A terror of suggestion half conceived.
And o'er it, like the folded shroud on dead
Stark breast, lay silence awful, absolute,
Empty of calm as fear is void of peace,
A stillness as of anguish-packt suspense
Before impending doom.
While thus he stood
Transfixed, with widened eyes that naught discerned,
Sudden the immensity of loneliness
Rushed on him, caught him by the throat and held
As 't were a thing alive and palpable;
And lo! from out the infinite vacancy
Came to him his own ghost—a self unknown,
Naked and importune confronting him—
They two alone in that vast emptiness;
And, awed, he looked his bared soul in the face
And was aghast, knowing it was himself
He chiefest feared.
As then his sight undimmed,
Far as the straining eye could reach, he saw
The torpid ether teem with shadowy souls
As teems a shaft of sun with sliding motes—
Myriads and myriads of ignoble souls,
The miserably dead, unslain in fight,
Thin outlined like a breath upon the air,
Passing, repassing, helpless wandering,
Unanchored by desire, intent, or will.
Ice-wraiths they seemed, blown into vaporous shapes
From grey dissolving mists, noiseless as clouds,
Each drifting past the other with no sign;
Each to the other naught, as winds that meet;
Each companied in its drear solitude
By its dead self.
Astonished, thus he saw,
And for a moment's shame felt coward fear
Clutch at his breast. In wrath he freed himself
From the ungodly thrall; then first perceived
Through the prodigious dusk a faint far ray
Of promise strangely sweet, and toward it strode.
Transcendent waxed the brilliance, and he wot
Its midmost ecstasy was Baldur's soul,
Irradiating love and joy and peace
In rich effulgence, making even in Hel
A Heaven ineffable. Beside the root
Of ageless Yggdrasil he glorious stood,
God of all beauty and all goodness, which
Eternally are one, his splendour now
No more obscured by veiling flesh, ablaze
As the full sun when clouds are overpast.
Lo, in that light supernal, as within
A holy womb, had been a miracle
Of birth. Deep stirred, the root of Yggdrasil,
The Ash-tree Yggdrasil, branched forth anew;
Dead leaves at the imperious call revived;
Soft mosses creeping came with velvet tread;
Sweet sun-warmed scents and half-heard wood-land sounds
Indefinite as sea-shell murmurings,
Made all the air a trembling ravishment;
Wan buds awoke, took back their laid-by bloom
And breathed out shaken raptures; buried brooks
Broke their white tombs, flung their cold cerements off,
Leapt laughing to the light, and sang aloud
The wondrous resurrection song of Spring;
And one by one, drawn helpless thitherward
Like sun-sucked mists, the shivering dead souls
Stretched out pale palms to the celestial gleam,
And on its burning edge hung quiveringly—
A nimbus round the flame; while nigher still,
Included wholly in its radiance,
A shape, diverse from these and godlier,
Depended motionless, so subtly mixt
With the enfolding light as scarce therefrom
Discernible, and Hermod knew the beam
For Hödur's thrice blest soul.
Near by, in state
Preposterous, befitting birth so foul—
Sister to Fenrir and to Jörmungard—
Grim Hela sat, Hel's most ill-favoured Queen,
Ruler of all unslain on battlefield,
The ingloriously, pitifully dead:
Nor could even Baldur's brightness re-illume
Her livid form to hue less horrible.
On Hermod full she bent her rancorous gaze,
And as the Gorgon's snake-encircled brow
Transformed to stone who ventured glance thereon,
So blackened Hel at the bare sight of her.

"How darest thou, unsummoned, with no taint
Of death upon thee, thus my realm invade?"
The words clashed out like rudely crossing swords.
"What here thy purpose?"
Courteous he bent
The knee. "At Frigga's hest, great Queen, I come,
Nor will delay to leave thee, so thou grant
Baldur the Beautiful with me return—
Baldur the Beautiful, our best beloved.
Thus only shall the lamentations cease
In Asgard where the gods their godhood mock,
Bewailing him who makes our sum of Heaven."

Thereat laughed Hela, and upon the sound
A shudder tore through Hel. "Lo, now," scoffed she,
And harsh her voice as iron meeting iron,
"Shall I win proof if Baldur verily
Be loved as thy unbridled speech proclaims.
Bid everything that draws the breath of life
Throughout the universe—nay, all that is,
Ev'n an it breathe not—bid all weep for him,
Compelling his re-birth with suppliant tears:
Then to the Æsir will I him restore,
That Asgard know again its vaunted Heaven,
And every faded star shine forth anew.
But doth one only shed no saving drop—
One only of the seething multitudes
Refuse that bidden sign—he here remains,
Unransomed, unredeemed, our flower of Hel."

"Oh, grace unparalleled! Oh, golden grief,
Itself the ransom of the woe it weeps!"
Cried Hermod, ravished. "O unbending Queen,
The eternal love of all the gladdened worlds
Reward thy clemency. Baldur is ours!
Baldur once more is ours!"
"Nay, by the gods,"
Swore Hela, "so soon is it not fulfilled.
Go thou, for I have said, and it abides."
Again she laughed. Again the floor of Hel
Shook, terrified.
Hermod on Baldur gazed,
And Baldur smiled on him; and with the smile
Shut in his heart, Hermod on Sleipnir sprang,
Cried to him once: "For Baldur's sake thy best!"
Nor needed second spur; o'erleapt the gates,
And journeyed back the awful Way of Death.
But lo! its nameless terrors were as naught;
Nor cold, nor dark, nor any thirst he knew;
And the long course of starless nights and dawns
A single perfect moment was to him,
So did hope master time and circumstance.

As thus he came to Asgard, silver-built,
That erst shone in mid-Heaven like a sun,
Now dull and dim as an unlighted moon,
The White God, Heimdall, watching from afar,
Caught up the Gjallar Horn, and blew a blast
Surpassing ev'n that seven-day trumpet blare
Laid Palestine's beleaguered city low;
Twice valorously he blew; and ere 't was done
Re-echoing mid the stars, the Æsir all
Across Bifröst, the burning Rainbow Bridge,
Came swift as meteors flung athwart the sky
From fiery hearted August's catapult.
Scarce greater joy Laodamia showed
Her risen lord, re-lent for three hours' grace,
Than they to Hermod. The famed Florentine
On his high pilgrimage was not so sore
Beset by starving shades for tale of friends
Long since dispaired, as now the god for word
Of Baldur; nor more swift those shadows plucked
The whole from scantiest beginnings, than
The Æsir wrested from him at a breath.

Then each, in tempered grief, as seers who hail
The desired end beyond a path of pain,
Cried out aloud with meed of moistened lids,
And struck their spears against their glassy shields
Till all the air was rent with silver sounds;
While clear above the tempest of their cries
Rang forth the slow sad strains of Frigga's dirge,
Tender with longing inexpressible.

FRIGGA'S DIRGE

Weep, weep for Baldur dead!
For light, for beauty sped!
For fairness from all fair things fled!
Gone is our summer with its flush of flowers,
Its purpled plains,
Its sunset stains.
Gone are its brooks, that babbled in green bowers,
Its misted dawns, its scented dews and showers,
Its rainbowed rains—
The glory of its golden hours
Endarkened wholly.
Gone, gone our light of life and love!
No more the iris-breasted dove,
Melodiously melancholy,
Croons o'er its plaint within the curtained grove.
No daring wing the distance cleaves.
No moth its gossamer shroud unweaves.
No wind-awakened, lisping leaves
Whisper their pleasure o'er and o'er
As Day unbars her lattice door,
Night swooning at her knee:
No more the sunbeam's glittering ball
Rebounds from silver shield and wall,
Drops from the dome o'er Gimli's Hall,
Or flashes from the sea.
No more! no more!
Evil hath laid its curse
Across our universe.
Lost is the god whom we implore.
Gloom and Despair
Foul fruitage bear,
And ice sheets cover
The stark worlds over.
Unstarred our eves; unsunned our noons;
Silent our skalds; forgot our runes;
Daytime and night are one.
Adown the desperate years
We call with steadfast tears.
No bitterer Hel can be
Than Heaven, missing thee,
Baldur—our life! our sun!

From highest heights now fell the All-Father's voice
Surcharged with lonely grief majestical,
Bidding the gods, as light and life they loved,
Speed forth whithersoever sun revolved
Or atom stirred, and cast command abroad
That all things to full measure of their love
For Baldur, now bewail him long and sore
With free-spent tears, if haply by such grace
Might Fate and Ragnarök forfended be.
And with the uttering of that word of dread,
On a slow sigh the great voice ebbed away,
As sighs and ceases a receding wave;
And silence held its breath for what should come.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net