“The gods are what you make them,
As earth shall Asgard prove;
And hate will come of hating,
And love will come of love.
“Make dole of skyr and black bread
That old and young may live;
And look to Frey for favor
When first like Frey you give.
“Even now o’er Njord’s sea-meadows
The summer dawn begins
The tun shall have its harvest,
The fiord its glancing fins.”
Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell
“By Gimli and by Hel,
O Vala of Thingvalla,
Thou singest wise and well!
“Too dear the AEsir’s favors
Bought with our children’s lives;
Better die than shame in living
Our mothers and our wives.
“The full shall give his portion
To him who hath most need;
Of curdled skyr and black bread,
Be daily dole decreed.”
He broke from off his neck-chain
Three links of beaten gold;
And each man, at his bidding,
Brought gifts for young and old.
Then mothers nursed their children,
And daughters fed their sires,
And Health sat down with Plenty
Before the next Yule fires.
The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;
The Doom-ring still remains;
But the snows of a thousand winters
Have washed away the stains.
Christ ruleth now; the Asir
Have found their twilight dim;
And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
The Vala sang of Him
1868.
The Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten
Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,
Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,
Met a temptation all too strong to bear,
And miserably sinned. So, adding not
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught
No more among the elders, but went out
From the great congregation girt about
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,
Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid
Open before him for the Bath-Col’s choice,
Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,
Behold the royal preacher’s words: “A
friend
Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;
And for the evil day thy brother lives.”
Marvelling, he said: “It is the Lord who
gives
Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells
Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels
In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees
Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees
Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay
My sins before him.”
And he went his way
Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;
But even as one who, followed unawares,
Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand
Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned
By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near
Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,
So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low
The wail of David’s penitential woe,
Before him still the old temptation came,
And mocked him with the motion and the shame
Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred
Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord
To free his soul and cast the demon out,
Smote with his staff the blankness round about.
