They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior’s head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck’s skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war, were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,
He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief; they freed
Beside the grave his battle steed;
And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart!  One piercing neigh
Arose, and, on the dead man’s plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.

L’ ENVOI

Ye voices, that arose
After the Evening’s close,
And whispered to my restless heart repose!

Go, breathe it in the ear
Of all who doubt and fear,
And say to them, “Be of good cheer!”

Ye sounds, so low and calm,
That in the groves of balm
Seemed to me like an angel’s psalm!

Go, mingle yet once more
With the perpetual roar
Of the pine forest dark and hoar!

Tongues of the dead, not lost
But speaking from deaths frost,
Like fiery tongues at Pentecost!

Glimmer, as funeral lamps,
Amid the chills and damps
Of the vast plain where Death encamps!

****************

BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR

“Speak! speak I thou fearful guest
 Who, with thy hollow breast
 Still in rude armor drest,
   Comest to daunt me! 
 Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
 Bat with thy fleshless palms
 Stretched, as if asking alms,
   Why dost thou haunt me?”

Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
   Gleam in December;
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
   From the heart’s chamber.

“I was a Viking old! 
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
   No Saga taught thee! 
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man’s curse;
   For this I sought thee.

“Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic’s strand,
I, with my childish hand,
   Tamed the gerfalcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
   That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.