Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TRAGEDY OF ASGARD: THE RE-BIRTH, by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TRAGEDY OF ASGARD: THE RE-BIRTH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: As to a watcher on a pier at night
Last Line: A deeper gloaming and I slept in night.'
Subject(s): Balder (norse God Of Light); Goddesses & Gods; Hodur (norse God); Mythology; Mythology - Norse; Nature; Sea; Ocean


As to a watcher on a pier at night
By western seas or deep Italian lakes,
When neither moon nor stars in heaven appear,
Slow-lifting water stretched far out of view
Makes baffling strange appeal, until he asks,—
'Shall day e'er dawn upon this dark again?'
So now unto the shadow the great sea
Called with enigma's voice and to no light
Rolled its unceasing waves, where naught that lives
Stirred, neither mermaid nor the fins of fish.
Who knows what years, nay, years of years now passed
Across the ruined world? Not one there was
To keep a count of days, though there were some
Who slept as seeds within the heart of earth.
Yet shall a sleeper reckon Time's elapse,
Or are dark hours counted in dreaming brains?
At last one morn, if morn that can be called
Which was but blackness, but a point of night
In age-long shadow, once again arose
The Star of Morning, o'er the sky-line gleamed,
Bathed its bright head among the floods and shone
In the void heaven. Who did awake that star,
Gave spontaneity to that bright orb,
Advanced that resurrection? Never skald
Has guessed at that tense riddle; I record
Only the unreasoning tradition fine.
And now a paleness crept along the cloud,
And exquisitely, as in summers sped,
The darkness faded to the rose of dawn.
A moment, and the sun was in the sky.
'Twas not that charioteer, whom long ago
A ravening wolf perpetually pursued,
But that star's daughter. Full of bloom and fire,
Her tresses streaming in the viewless airs,
She now sprang forward to her task sublime,
But no fell monster chased her. As she shone,
Raining new warmth down on the dawn-flushed waves,
There grew a little island from their midst.
Slowly it grew: then broadened, and in sight
Came mountains, which shook downward the ambient flood
From their great shoulders, as leviathan,
Couched in his shallow on a summer's day,
Gradually rises, lifting rugged crests,
Dim coruscations upon flank and spine.
The continent of mountains waxed amain,
And soon beneath the radiance of the sun
They were re-belted with wide laughing woods
And steep slant meadows full of rippling grass,
And next about their feet long plains appeared
That glowed with vineyards, thick with purple grapes,
And waved across with cornfields harvest-ripe,
And greened in meadows overrun with flowers.
And as the marvel in the sea increased,
Sudden, with lovely clamour, all at once
The many-throated armies of the birds
Resumed their huge acclaim of ancient song!
The world had been re-born, and the Nine Homes,
And all the splendours of immortal heaven.
Where Asgard's gleaming palaces had risen
Before the burning, spread a vasty plain,
The Field of Ida called, and here at noon
The remnant of the Gods together met.
They had not suffered death, but how they baulked
Surtur I know not, how escaped the fire
No skald has written. Balder now returned,
Balder the beautiful, the clement god,
Whom the branched mistletoe so blindly flung
Deathward to Hel. In that obscure demense
Gladly almost he lingered. There at least
He saw not violent death nor constant scars,
But only patient faces of old men
Dead of their palsy, or of younger wights
Whom sickness or mayhap a falling tree,
At wood-cutting pulled wrily to the ground,
Deep in the shadow of the fir-woods old,
Had smitten out of season. With him came
Hodur, who guiltless slew him. Slow they paced
With intertwining arms as brothers wont,
Forgiveness in their eyes. Anon to them
Widar and Wali, those avenging gods,
Appeared together: their supreme revenge
No more they studied, but beholding friends,
Cried in great ecstasy: 'O Balder dear,
O Hodur, blind old comrade, hail once more!
We thought ye ne'er would reascend to light,
And we no more should see ye! What is this?
Have we been dreaming some long evil dream,
Such as thou, Balder, dreamedst ere thy death?
Happy are we beholding you again!
Let us sit here a little span and talk
And settle our strayed minds!' And as they spoke
Warmly, with happy teardrops in their eyes,
Two tall heroic forms from forth a wood
Emergent rose, and Thor's great sons returned,
Magni and Modi, Power and Courage named.
And in their arms they bore Miölnir back.
Then sitting down upon their rocky thrones,
They held high conclave there, and in these six
Their fathers, the great Aesir, rose again.
Incarnate in these gods old powers re-spoke
Pleasantly, as when dear friends parted long
Meet over wine at eve. Of what had been,
Of Jormungandir and of Fenris dead,
And all the glories of the days that were,
Long they collogued, recalling their old runes,
Those mysteries that sever gods from men.
And one described a marvel he had seen,
Saying, 'When we were sitting in that dark
Of late, or haply in that elder time
Before the dread Last Battle,—for my thoughts
Are in confusion wholly disarrayed,—
With broken harps and useless swords piled up
About us, and each one was drooping low
A morning meditative head, and thick
Cobwebs of dreams about our eyes were woven,
And ruddy dust of twilight filled the dusk,
There was a stir in our vast cavernous hall,
And lo ! a panting messenger appeared,
One who had travelled far, swum many streams,
Crossed many Alps, descended many depths,
With news from upper air. 'O Gods,' he cried,
'Your day is over. Far, far hence are lands
Whick know you not, and have a different way
Of living. I have seen them. There has risen
One shall o'ershadow and outdo your fame !
He is a pale worn man, of peasant stock,
Yet mightier than all gods.' Feebly we stirred
At this strange treason, but while yet he spake,
Wan in the twilight of our solitude,
The shadows o'er his head were rent in twain,
And we beheld the semblance of a Man,
Nailed on a tree, and with effulgent eyes
Bent pitying upon us! Therewith fell
A deeper gloaming and I slept in night.'





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