Jotunheim

I     Beyond the Northern Lights, in regions haunted     Of twilight, where the world is glacier planted,     And pale as Loki in his cavern when     The serpent's slaver burns him to the bones,     I saw the phantasms of gigantic men,     The prototypes of vastness, quarrying stones;     Great blocks of winter, glittering with the morn's     And evening's colors,--wild prismatic tones     Of boreal beauty.--Like the three gray Norns,     Silence and solitude and terror loomed     Around them where they labored. Walls arose,     Vast as the Andes when creation boomed     Insurgent fire; and through the rushing snows     Enormous battlements of tremendous ice,     Bastioned and turreted, I saw arise. II     But who can sing the workmanship gigantic     That reared within its coruscating dome     The roaring fountain, hurling an Atlantic     Of streaming ice that flashed with flame and foam?     An opal spirit, various and many formed,--     In whose clear heart reverberant fire stormed,--     Seemed its inhabitant; and through pale halls,     And deep diaphanous walls,     And corridors of whiteness.     Auroral colors swarmed,     As rosy-flickering stains,     Or lambent green, or gold, or crimson, warmed     The pulsing crystal of the spirit's veins     With ever-changing brightness.     And through the Arctic night there went a voice,     As if the ancient Earth cried out, "Rejoice!     My heart is full of lightness!" III     Here well might Thor, the god of war,     Harness the whirlwinds to his car,     While, mailed in storm, his iron arm     Heaves high his hammer's lava-form,     And red and black his beard streams back,     Like some fierce torrent scoriac,     Whose earthquake light glares through the night     Around some dark volcanic height;     And through the skies Valkyrian cries     Trumpet, as battleward he flies,     Death in his hair and havoc in his eyes. IV     Still in my dreams I hear that fountain flowing;     Beyond all seeing and beyond all knowing;     Still in my dreams I see those wild walls glowing     With hues, Aurora-kissed;     And through huge halls fantastic phantoms going.     Vast shapes of snow and mist,--     Sonorous clarions of the tempest blowing,--     That trail dark banners by,     Cloudlike, underneath the sky     Of the caverned dome on high,     Carbuncle and amethyst.--     Still I hear the ululation     Of their stormy exultation,     Multitudinous, and blending     In hoarse echoes, far, unending;     And, through halls of fog and frost,     Howling back, like madness lost     In the moonless mansion of     Its own demon-haunted love. V     Still in my dreams I hear the mermaid singing;     The mermaid music at its portal ringing;     The mermaid song, that hinged with gold its door,     And, whispering evermore,     Hushed the ponderous hurl and roar     And vast olian thunder     Of the chained tempests under     The frozen cataracts that were its floor.--     And, blinding beautiful, I still behold     The mermaid there, combing her locks of gold,     While, at her feet, green as the Northern Seas,     Gambol her flocks of seals and walruses;     While, like a drift, her dog--a Polar bear--     Lies by her, glowering through his shaggy hair. VI     O wondrous house, built by supernal hands     In vague and ultimate lands!     Thy architects were behemoth wind and cloud,     That, laboring loud,     Mountained thy world foundations and uplifted     Thy skyey bastions drifted     Of piled eternities of ice and snow;     Where storms, like ploughmen, go,     Ploughing the deeps with awful hurricane;     Where, spouting icy rain,     The huge whale wallows; and through furious hail     Th' explorer's tattered sail     Drives like the wing of some terrific bird,     Where wreck and famine herd.--     Home of the red Auroras and the gods!     He who profanes thy perilous threshold,--where     The ancient centuries lair,     And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,--     Let him beware!     Lest, coming on that hoary presence there,     Whose pitiless hand,     Above that hungry land,     An iceberg wields as sceptre, and whose crown     The North Star is, set in a band of frost,     He, too, shall feel the bitterness of that frown,     And, turned to stone, forevermore be lost.