And died away,

Through the dreamy night,

In accents of despair.

Baldur the Beautiful,

God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the gods!

Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior's sword.

All things in earth and air
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones;
All save the mistletoe,

The sacred mistletoe!

Hoeder, the blind old god,

Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast
With his sharp spear, by fraud
Made of the mistletoe,
Th' accursed mistletoe!

They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,

As on a funeral pyre.

Odin placed

A ring upon his finger,

And whispered in his ear.

They launched the burning ship!

It floated far away

Over the misty sea,

Till like the sun it seemed,

Sinking beneath the waves.

Baldur returned no more!

LONGFELLOW.

THE VALKYRIOR, OR CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN.

WEAVE the crimson web of war;

Let us go, and let us fly

Where our friends the conflict share,

Where they triumph, where they die.

We the reins to slaughter give,

Ours to kill, and ours to spare.

GRAY.

THE RUNIC RHYME.

UPROSE the king of men with speed,
And saddled straight his coal-black steed;
Down the yawning steep he rode,
That leads to Hela's dread abode,
Till full before his fearless eyes
The portals nine of hell arise.

Facing to the northern clime,
Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme,
Thrice pronounced, in accents dread,
The thrilling verse that wakes the dead,
Till from out the hollow ground
Slowly breathed a sullen sound.

GRAY.

THE AURORA BOREALIS.

"TIs midnight, but a rich unnatural dawn
Sheets the fixed arctic heaven; forth springs an arch
O'erspanning with a crystal pathway pure

The starry sky, as though for gods to march,
With show of heavenly warfare daunting earth,
To that wild revel of the northern clouds,
That now with broad and bannery light distinct,

Stream in their restless wavings to and fro,

While the sea-billows gleam them mellower back; Anon like slender lances bright upstart,

And clash and cross with hurtle and with flash,

Tilting their airy tournament.

MILMAN.

THE DRUIDS.

To a hope

Not less ambitious once, among the wilds
Of Sarum's plain, my youthful spirit was raised.
There, as I ranged at will the pastoral downs,
Time with his retinue of ages fled
Backwards, nor checked his flight until I saw
Our dim ancestral Past in vision clear

;

Saw multitudes of men, and, here and there,
A single Briton clothed in wolf-skin vest,
With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold.
I called on Darkness, - but before the word

Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take
All objects from my sight; and lo, again
The Desert visible by dismal flames!

It is the sacrificial altar, fed

With living men,

how deep the groans! the voice

Of those that crowd the giant wicker thrills
The monumental hillocks, and the pomp

Is for both worlds, the living and the dead.
At other moments, (for through that wide waste
Three summer days I roamed,) where'er the plain
Was figured o'er with circles, lines, or mounds,

Shaped by the Druids,—so to represent

Their knowledge of the heavens, and image forth
The constellations, — gently was I charmed
Into a waking dream, a reverie

That with believing eyes, where'er I turned,
Beheld long-bearded teachers, with white hands
Uplifted, pointing to the starry sky,
Alternately, and plain below, while breath

Of music swayed their motions, and the waste
Rejoiced with them and me in those sweet sounds.

WORDSWORTH.

THE CULDEES.

THE pure Culdees

Were Albyn's earliest priests of God,

Ere yet an island of her seas

By foot of Saxon monk was trod,