Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TRAGEDY OF ASGARD: THE LAST BATTLE, by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TRAGEDY OF ASGARD: THE LAST BATTLE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Loud with a terrible clamour once again
Last Line: Over that anguish flowed the unquiet sea.
Subject(s): Fights; Goddesses & Gods; Mythology; Mythology - Norse; Odin (norse God); Thor (norse God Of Thunder)


Loud with a terrible clamour once again
Rang the Giallahorn, and now began
The Last of Battles. Mazy overflows
Such as upon smooth sands the billow spills,
Advancing and retreating, surged the hosts
Ere yet they grappled fiercely hand to hand,
And from the dark Betrayer's companies
Fenris set up a long and awful howl,
While to high heaven the Jormundgandir Worm
Reared her vile head, and lashing monstrously
This way and that, envenomed all the skies
With spurts of poison from her nostrils blown.
There was no need that day of sun and moon,
The many fallen stars, or Odin's cloak
Spangled with astral fireflies, for the flame
Of Muspel's direful host illumed that war
Brightlier than noon. So, on some Cymric stream,
The dancing midnight torches sudden glare
Athwart great spitted salmon tossed to die
On shingly banks, and on the hurrying forms
Of the swart poachers with blood-dripping spears.
And now, a beetling, throbbing wall of fire,
With crenelations of up-leaping flame,
The Sons of Muspel roared in swift advance
Upon the heroes, on the troops of Frey.
Midmost within that wall of burning heat,
Surtur, the blackened, loomed with brandished sword,
An old ineffable hatred in his eyes.
Firm stood the innumerable hosts of heaven;
And, now with sounding impact shaking earth,
Those armies rushed together, and awhile,
Obscurely in close swaddling-bands of flame
Struggled; but soon the Sons of Muspel fell
Backward, discomfited, and the first bout
Of that titanic war was won by Heaven.
Yet nought dismayed, Muspel's red hosts returned,
Dazzling and swift, with Surtur's sword in front,
And charged again and yet again, as charged
At Waterloo an Emperor's chivalry
Full thirteen times on England's iron squares.
And now in hundred separate agonies
Engaged a host of heroes. Thor leapt down
From his high car and, wielding his great club,
Slew huge Rimethurses, dragons, beasts of shape
That man may not imagine, births obscene
Sprung from the wombs of giantesses old,
And fierce rebelling gods who travelling far
In ages long forgot had sowed a seed
Of vengeful bastardy against high Heaven.
How gloriously strong Thor of th' Aesir strove,
How blithely plied Miölnir here and there,
Crushing the giant skulls and beating down
Envenomed gaping jaws and fiery crests.
Oh, he excelled in that last war the toils
Performed in Utgard when he drained the sea,
Drinking the Giant's horn, and lifting up
The Cat that was the metamorphosed Worm.
And now the Battle's midmost scene approached.
Doubtful, with hesitating hands, they led
Odin into the melée. 'Bring me where
Fenris lies couched to spring!' he cried aloud.
'Alas, I should have cast him into Hel!
Alas, you tied him insecurely, gods!
He rages on me! He shall die!' At once
He plunged with Gungnir his unvanquished lance
At what he deemed his huge and shaggy foe.
He that fights wolves that leap up from the ground
Should have a hundred eyes and deftly smite
The dodging muzzle and side-snapping jaws.
But Odin saw not now, his eye in pawn
With Mimir in the Well. In vain he fought.
How many moments of insensate lunge
And hopeless parry then ensued none dared
Recount at any time; for skalds and seers
Love not to sing death-agonies of gods,
And Wala's self, who sleeps entombed beside
Hel's eastward gate, said only, when she spake
Her mystic prophecy to clustered gods,—
'Freya's dear hero very soon shall fall!'
Nought else she told, accounting silence best.
Had she foreknowledge of that strife untoward?
Did her eyes pierce the cloud? Beheld she clear
The Wolf's devouring fangs and gulping throat,
And Odin rent in pieces, and—? But no,
There are some sorrows and deep noble shames
That blind through sheer dismay and are not seen!
So Odin fell, immeasurable loss,
And now his fate obscure enraged the gods
And unto desperate forlorn attempts
One after the other urged them. First, bright Freyer,
Niördur's son and Freya's brother, rushed
To avenge his kinsman on the flaming cloud
Of Muspel's Sons, and struck at Surtur's breast.
But oh, he lacked his sharp self-waving sword,
Which he had given to Skirnir, his young page,
During the wooing of Frost-prisoned Gerd,
Gerda the 'Sleeping Beauty' of our youth,
Whom Freyer, the Prince of Day, re-kissed to life.
Odin his eye had lost and Frey his brand,
But Surtur's self-swayed sword, that like the sun
Flashed through that Battle, circled in an arc
Of golden lightning, like Excalibur
In Arthur's legend, and dealt Frey his death.
Then Thor against the Midgard Snake advanced
With lofty port, and lifting high his Club
Miölnir, hight the Miller, smote and slew
The writh'd enormous terror. Back Thor stept
Nine paces, but forgot that serpents still
Mechanically for long after death
Perform their wormy functions, so that oft
An adder severed by a hedger's scythe
Unconsciously will curl this way and that,
A dread to those who watch! This adder now,
Dying, envenomed the surrounding air
So direfully, that breathing in deep breaths
As an athlete will, Odin's mighty son
Fell poisoned to the ground! So ended Thor.
Anon in final combat Heimdal locked
With Loki, that Imprisoner, and lord
Of those intruding armies. Long they strove,
Dealing fierce blows, which had they fallen on earth
Had shaken her unto her outposts far.
And at the last, one stabbing, one with thrusts,
In mutual death they thunderously fell.
With that a little vengeance cheered the gods.
Vidar, the August of Space, upon the Wolf,
Now glutted by the feast that none might name,
Rushed vengefully, and set his mighty shoe,
Welded from shavings of the brogues men wear
And shape in wintry hours beside their hearths,
On the beast's nether jaw, and with one hand
Its other quickly seized, and drave his sword
Sheer down the yawning throat unto the hilt.
So for a while great Odin was avenged.
And Tyr, the valiant and the sage, attacked
Garm, the huge hound of Hela. Grappling long
They wrestled furiously, till Tyr prevailed,
And the fierce monster cast upon his side
To pant out life the heaped-up dead among.
And now the leaders everywhere were fallen,
And glorious Aesir and strange brutes difform
Rolled in a death confused. The Serpent's tail
Was wreathed around the pillar of Thor's neck,
And Fenris in a fringe of heroes lay,
And high on drifts of agonists were propped
Heimdal's and Loki's frames. But now no less,
But fiercelier, more inexorably raged
The combat. So, in that old civil war,
In Britanny, a century ago,
When nobles, leaders, priests were dead or fled,
The desperate goatherds in their rage still fought
For a spent cause and vanished polity,
Altars now shattered and an exile King.
It seemed in that last strife on Wigrid's Plain
All earth and heaven were joined: high mountains fell,
And deep abysmal crevices were cloven
Down unto Hel itself: the skies were rent
As is a garment in a struggling crowd:
It seemed as though the firmament would fall,
And moaning like a human thing in pain,
With clamour of unnumbered swaying boughs,
The Tree of Yggdrasil rocked to and fro,
And dense upon the darkling bridge of Hel
Innumerable thronged the new-born ghosts
Of heroes slain, who sorrowfully trooped,
With swinging hands, and loose unbucklered arms,
An ever-hurrying ever-swelling horde,
To dye with blood the Pillar of the World.
And now the Dark One, the dread Surtur, rose,
And upward slow began to draw himself.
Taller and still more tall he waxed, until
His head touched heaven. A ravening fire in front,
And walls of flame behind, he towered, as towers
That Torre of Bologna Dante sang,
And like that Torre in the travelling cloud,
Betwixt the levins he obscurely loomed
In darkness, whence his flaming sword emerged.
Then that bright blade with gesture swift and vast
He flung o'er heaven and earth and all the worlds,
And straightway everything that breathes or is,
—Hero and man, beast, bird, and creeping thing,
And each slim tree, and every jagged rock,
Spearing like some tall idol o'er the woods,
And every herb and stone medicinal,—
Was plunged into a rolling lake of fire.
Flame lapped the corners of the world and slew
Those Elves that guard them, and great Yggdrasil
Was girt about with flame, which but increased
Before a howling tempest, till at length
Heaven, earth, and the Nine Homes had ceased to be,
For Surtur,'s ravening wall had licked them up.
And when the fire abated and a smoke
Reddened across the blackened wreck of things,
Over that anguish flowed the unquiet sea.





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