{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_57371/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_57371","id":"gutenberg_57371","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57371","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas","Iceland -- Drama","Mythology, Norse -- Drama","Tragedies (Drama)"],"text":"E-text prepared by Paul Marshall, Mary Glenn Krause, MFR, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images\ngenerously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)\n\n\n\nNote: Images of the original pages are available through\n Internet Archive. See\n https://archive.org/details/fenriswolftraged00mack\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s note:\n\n Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).\n\n Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.\n\n\n\n\n\nFENRIS, THE WOLF\n\n\n[Illustration: Publisher's logo]\n\n\nFENRIS, THE WOLF\n\nA Tragedy\n\nby\n\nPERCY MACKAYE\n\nAuthor of \u201cThe Canterbury Pilgrims\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York\nThe Macmillan Company\nLondon: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.\n1905\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nCopyright, 1905,\nBy the Macmillan Company.\n\nSet up and electrotyped. Published April, 1905.\n\nNorwood Press\nJ. S. Cushing & Co. \u2014 Berwick & Smith Co.\nNorwood, Mass., U.S.A.\n\n\n TO\n NORMAN HAPGOOD\n\n CRITIC AND FRIEND\n\n\n\n\nAUTHOR\u2019S NOTE\n\n\nThe invocation of Ingimund to Odin, on page 38, is adapted from\nFragments of a Spell Song, preserved as an insertion in the Great\nPlay of the Wolsungs, and to be found, both original and translation,\nin the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ of Vigfusson and Powell, Oxford,\n1883.\n\nFor dramatic reasons, various liberties have been taken by the writer\nwith those elements of this play which are drawn from Scandinavian\nmythology. For example, according to mythology, the Fenris-wolf is\nthe offspring, not of Odin, but of Loki; the wolf and Baldur are not\nbrothers; no mention is made of the wolf\u2019s Pack. Moreover, in the Old\nIcelandic utterances of the Pack\u2014for purposes of sound merely\u2014a\npreterite form has twice been used for a present tense, as in _Ulfr\nsofnathi_, \u201cthe wolf sleepeth.\u201d\n\nWhere authenticity, however, has harmonised with the dramatic idea,\nit has equally been the writer\u2019s aim.\n\n CORNISH, N.H., March, 1905.\n\n\n\n\n CHARACTERS\n\n OF THE PROLOGUE\n\n ODIN\n BALDUR\n THOR\n LOKI\n FENRIS\n FENRIS\u2019S PACK\n FREYJA\n\n OF THE PLAY\n\n INGIMUND, _Priest of Odin_\n EGIL, _a Hunter_\n ARFI, _a Dwarf, his brother_\n YORUL, _liegeman of Egil_\n ROLF, _liegeman of Egil_\n ERIC, _liegeman of Egil_\n WULDOR, _liegeman of Arfi_\n A LITTLE BOY\n THORDIS, _daughter of Ingimund and priestess of Odin\u2019s temple_\n FRIDA, _one of her Virgins_\n A LITTLE GIRL\n\n FOLK, PRIESTS, VIRGINS, CHILDREN\n\n\n\n\n SCENES\n\n THE PROLOGUE. _The crater of a volcano; dawn._\n\n ACT FIRST.\n SCENE I. _The rune-stone of Odin, outside a\n tribal temple; morning._\n SCENE II. _Egil\u2019s lodge in the forest; toward twilight._\n\n ACT SECOND.\n SCENE I. _A prison chamber; day._\n SCENE II. _The same; night._\n\n ACT THIRD. _A forest glade; the pool of Freyja; early morning._\n\n ACT FOURTH. _The rune-stone again; sunset._\n\n TIME AND PLACE\n _The Age of Northern Mythology; Iceland. The incidents of\n the play are conceived as taking place within the cycle\n of a year._\n\n\n\n\n THE PROLOGUE\n\n\n Foreground\u2014a frozen crater\n\n _At back, a cavern. Overhanging this, at left and back,\n snow-crusted cliffs, partly bared by the winds, stand\n out against the stars._\n\n _On one of these_, ODIN _seated; on his\n shoulders, two ravens. Beneath him, in the crater and\n cavern, half-discernible_, FENRIS _and his_\n PACK.\n\n ODIN\n He sleeps, yet restive still; with eyelids squint\n Through which his eyes, in dreams still shifting, flash\n Like flame through knot-holes. Yet he sleeps; beside him\n His wild pack, crouching, share his chain.\u2014A lull:\n Betwixt moonset and sunrise, one at least,\n One lull in that insensate harsh defiance,\n The beast-night-barking of my wolfish son.\n You stars! Fenris is quiet. Now the dews\n May fall in silence, now the mountain birds\n Nest silent by the unawakened morning,\n The wide dark fold its wings and dream. Now peace,\n The infinite soliloquy of thought,\n Descends on Odin.\n\n [_A silent pause, during which the first pale signs of dawn\n appear on the crags. Odin whispers to the ravens on his\n shoulders and they fly away. He sits motionless and\n serene._]\n\n THE PACK\n [_Slumbrously._]\n Ulfr! Ulfr sofnathi!\n\n ODIN\n [_Gazes again on_ FENRIS.]\n That this dread should breathe!\n And yon beast born from out my loins\u2014to me,\n To me, that from this forehead plucked an eye\n To pawn for Mimi\u2019s knowledge.\u2014Wisdom, truth,\n Beauty, and law, the tranquil goals of mind,\n All these had I attained, and I a god;\n Yet on the lank, alluring hag of Chaos\n Begat this son, this living fang.\n\n THE PACK\n [_Slumbrously._]\n Ulfr! Ulfr sofnathi!\n\n ODIN\n O thou\n Dumb spirit of the mind! O mystery!\n Were there a god whom Odin might invoke,\n To thee would Odin sue for pity.\u2014Ages,\n A thousand ages, anguish;\n Anguish, remorse, forgiveness, malediction,\n Light into darkness, horror into hope,\n Revolving evermore.\u2014O pain, O pain,\n Sear not my spirit blind!\u2014Thou, tameless wolf,\n God of the void eternal retrograde,\n Prone deity of self, by that thou art\u2014\n Illimitable passion, joyance mad\n Of being, hate, brute-cunning, gnawing lust,\n Fenris, I curse thee.\n [_Fenris wakes._]\n\n THE PACK\n [_Wildly._]\n Ulfr! Ulfr vaknathi!\n\n FENRIS\n Father!\n\n ODIN\n Still that name!\n\n FENRIS\n Father!\n\n ODIN\n Fenris, my son, forgive me.\n\n FENRIS\n Fetch Fenris Freyja.\n\n ODIN\n Bastard wolf,\n Be silent.\n\n FENRIS\n Baldur, my brother\u2019s bride betroth\u00e8d,\n Freyja, fetch me.\n\n ODIN\n Still no longing but \u2019tis lust,\n No aspiration but \u2019tis appetite.\n\n FENRIS\n Anarch! anarch! anarch! Father, free me!\n\n ODIN\n Free thee, thou poor antagonist. Knowest thou\n Not yet why thou art chained? Retarded thing,\n Emancipate thyself! What might it avail\n Though Odin burst these links and loosed thee?\u2014Thou\n Thyself art thine own bondage and thy pain.\n\n THE PACK\n Ulfr! Ulfr!\n\n FENRIS\n Anarch! anarch! Ulfr!\n\n ODIN\n Yet could\u2019st thou show some genesis of good,\n Some spring of growth. Hadst thou, in all these ages,\n Waxed toward my stature imperceptibly\n Even as the seed, that germinates in darkness,\n Feels toward the sky; yea, hadst thou now one pale\n Potential spark of godhood, nobler desire,\n Evolving intellect, one lineal trait\n To prove that upward through thy brutish heart\n Yearns infinite Reason, even now, poor son,\n Would I strike off these fetters, set thee free,\n Thee and thy pack, and put my hope in time.\n\n THE PACK\n Heil! Heil, Othinn!\n\n FENRIS\n Fenris! Free him.\n\n ODIN\n But lo! instead, what art thou? Ye faint stars,\n Before you close your eyes in day, once more\n Behold him! Ye icy craters and hoar caves,\n Thou solitary dawn, eternal sky,\n Perennial snows\u2014you timeless presences,\n Behold your consummation: this, even this,\n Is Odin\u2019s elder son, creation\u2019s heir!\n\n FENRIS\n Anarch! anarch! anarch! anarch! anarch!\n\n [_Odin, covering his face, turns away and disappears behind\n the crag. Fenris, with his pack, retires into the\n cavern, dragging his chain. Outside_ BALDUR\n _is heard singing, joined, in chorus, by the voices of\n nature on whom he calls_.]\n\n BALDUR\n Flushing peak, fainting star,\n Freyja!\n Torches in thy temple are,\n Freyja!\n Spirits of air,\n Anses and elves,\n Brightens the dawn,\n Freyja is gone.\n Come! let us go to her, girding ourselves.\n\n CHORUS\n Freyja, where art thou?\n Where? Where?\n\n [FREYJA _enters, looking fearfully around her_.]\n\n FREYJA\n Those giant beards and backs!\u2014They turn and look.\n The peaks pursue me, and the nudging cliffs\n Thrust out great chins and stare. Where should this lead?\n\n BALDUR\n [_Outside._]\n Mortal day, man\u2019s desires,\n Freyja!\n Feed on earth thine altar-fires,\n Freyja!\n Spirits of earth,\n Wood-sprites and Wanes,\n Gone is our mirth,\n Sorrow remains.\n Come! let us hasten and bid her beware!\n\n CHORUS\n Freyja, where art thou?\n Where? Where?\n\n FREYJA\n Can this place be i\u2019 the world? And were such shapes\n Wrought in the dear creation? And that voice\u2014\n Was it this crater\u2019s frozen mouth that moaned\n For blossoms and the south wind and my love?\n\n BALDUR\n [_Enters._]\n Freyja!\n\n FREYJA\n O Baldur, come!\n\n BALDUR\n What hast thou seen?\n Why hast thou left the silver roof of shields,\n Thy lover\u2019s eyes, the laughter of the gods,\n To wander forth in night?\n\n FREYJA\n Barkings I heard.\n\n BALDUR\n Hush, Freyja!\n\n FREYJA\n Through the music of the gods\n Faintly I heard it knell and yearn for me;\n And so I stole away. But tell me\u2014\n\n BALDUR\n Come!\n\n FREYJA\n Tell me what thing of nameless woe\u2014\n\n BALDUR\n Oh, come\n And ask not. Come away to Valhal.\n\n [_He leads her impetuously away from the crater toward\n the sunrise._]\n\n FREYJA\n [_Resists gently._]\n Baldur!\n\n BALDUR\n Freyja, look down! Spring leaps among the valleys\n And calls his universal flocks, to drink\n The love of Freyja.\n The forests rush together and the groves,\n And the male oaks, like herded elk at war,\n Tangle their budding antlers, and moan loud\n For Freyja\u2019s love.\n\n Look down! The silvered pastures and the lakes\n Lift all their sacrificial clouds, to crave\n The love of Freyja;\n And day\u2019s bright stallion, snorting in the east,\n Paws the pale stream of morning into gold\n And champs his golden curb to burning foam\n For Freyja\u2019s love.\n\n [_He draws her farther away._]\n\n FREYJA\n But if _one_ yearn in vain\u2014\n\n [_The rattle of Fenris\u2019s manacles echoes in the crater._]\n\n THE PACK\n Ulfr! Ulfr vaknathi!\n\n FREYJA\n Listen! They cry\u2014\n \u201cThe wolf awakeneth!\u201d What wolf? And why\n That clang of steel?\n\n BALDUR\n His chain.\n\n FREYJA\n [_In dreadful wonder._]\n But _he_?\n\n BALDUR\n A beast\n Untamed and tameless.\u2014Ask not with thine eyes!\u2014\n Fenris, my brother.\n\n FREYJA\n [_Springs joyfully toward the crater._]\n Ah!\n\n BALDUR\n [_Stays her._]\n Where art thou going?\n\n FREYJA\n To greet my lover\u2019s kindred. Were it not well?\n\n BALDUR\n Oh, would it were! Look not; this kin is monstrous.\n\n FREYJA\n Is it not a god as we?\n\n BALDUR\n It is a god,\n Freyja, but not as we.\u2014It is the wolf-god,\n Lord of the dumb and kithless wild, that live\n To breed and kill their forms of dreadful beauty\u2014\n A vacant sacrifice to him: the doe,\n That stills all night her knocking heart, to hear\n The wood-cat\u2019s footfall, breathes mute prayer to Fenris;\n The frothing stag, that blazons the black boar\n With gules of death, bruits hymns to Fenris; yet\n Their pangs assuage him not, for he himself\n Remains the abject deity of lust,\n His rites, the stretched claw and the stiffened mane;\n His priest\u2014a sated fang; his altar\u2014fear.\n\n FREYJA\n But why makes he his sanctuary thus\n Lonely in desolation?\n\n BALDUR\n \u2019Tis the will\n Of Odin. Ask no more. This cleft he chose\n Wherein to hide the secret woe of the world,\n That never thou shouldst look upon its face.\n\n FREYJA\n\n I?\n\n BALDUR\n Thou, O maiden! Thou art the hope of the world.\n\n FENRIS\n Freyja!\n\n FREYJA\n He calls me.\n\n FENRIS\n Freyja!\n\n FREYJA\n Hark! He yearns\n For me!\n\n BALDUR\n [_Urging her away._]\n \u2019Tis Odin\u2019s will.\n\n FENRIS\n Freyja!\n\n FREYJA\n He cries\n In pain. Hold me no longer.\u2014Fenris!\n\n ODIN\n [_Entering, intercepts her path with his spear._]\n Stay!\n\n FREYJA\n Allfather! hark his pain. Alas, poor wolf!\n\n ODIN\n Poor wolf? Poor world! poor blind, precarious Reason,\n Beneath whose sovereign throne this horror sits,\n Cat-crouching to usurp it.\u2014Fear him; go!\n\n FENRIS\n Ai! ai! anarch! Freyja!\n\n FREYJA\n He yearns for me. Am I not beautiful?\n Am I not holy? Wherefore should I fear?\n All living things love Freyja; gods and men,\n Anses and elves and helpless animals.\n Where I walk glittering, there lovers press\n And consecrate their eyes and beat their hearts\n Like moths against the moon. And shall I go\n Nor smile once kindly on him? Even the moon\n Is kinder to her loves.\n\n ODIN\n He craves no smile\n From thee, nor ever smiled into the face\n Of love since his birth-hour. He lusts for thee.\n\n FREYJA\n Why should he not? Hath Odin never lusted?\n What mind that knows the lust of intellect\n Shall mock desire? Ah! Who that ever yearned,\n Yearned not in ignorance?\n\n BALDUR\n Have pity, father!\n\n ODIN\n [_To Freyja._]\n Child, pitiest thou this thing?\n\n FREYJA\n Hath not its voice\n Cried out immortally and craved me? Pity?\n _Love_ is a kind of pity for itself\n That longs so endlessly. Allfather, never\n Ere now hast thou gainsaid me.\n\n ODIN\n Yet must now!\n This bitterness is mine alone to bear.\n O Freyja! O my Baldur! You of all\n The creatures of my will, bright lovers, you\n Only are happy. Be so still. Depart!\n Forget these wolvish cries; seek not to help\n Evil unsolvable.\n\n FREYJA\n What then is evil,\n That lovers may not solve it?\n\n ODIN\n [_His face turning wistful with a beautiful light,\n lifts his obstructive spear, and stands from\n the path._]\n Hope of the world!\n\n FENRIS\n Freyja!\n\n ODIN\n Behold!\n\n [_He watches with the look of wistfulness as Freyja and\n Baldur, springing to the brink of the crater, gaze down\n upon Fenris._]\n\n FREYJA\n Ah me!\n\n BALDUR\n Fenris, my brother!\n\n FREYJA\n O pain! Why dost thou look upon me so?\n\n FENRIS\n Fair art, Freyja; shalt Fenris fear not?\n\n FREYJA\n What wouldst thou?\n\n FENRIS\n Lithe thy limbs are; lief am to lie with thee.\n\n FREYJA\n Are these snows thy dwelling-place?\n No flowers grow here. Take these.\n\n [_Freyja lets fall some of her flowers into the crater._]\n\n FENRIS\n [_Tearing them, as the Pack yells._]\n Anarch! anarch!\n\n FREYJA\n [_Drawing back._]\n Alas!\n\n BALDUR\n Peace, brother!\n\n FREYJA\n Thou lovest me. Why, then, art thou not glad?\n\n FENRIS\n Chafe, choke me, chains; chaffeth the churl at me!\n\n FREYJA\n Take heart; we come to bring thee peace. O Baldur!\n\n [_Clinging to Baldur, she gazes with fascinated awe upon\n Fenris, who, pacing ever in and out, amid his involving\n Pack, with the swift, incessant shuttle movement of\n a caged wild thing, upturns his shifting eyes in\n yearning._]\n\n FENRIS\n Free me, Freyja; frore am I, frost-bit,\n Go we together into greenwood glad.\n Mirk under moon-mist mad will meet thee,\n Hunt thee from hiding, thy heart-beats hear!\n Press thee, panting!\n\n THE PACK\n Ulfr! Ulfr!\n\n FENRIS\n Bite\u2014bark at thee\u2014\n\n THE PACK\n Ulfr! Ulfr!\n\n FENRIS\n Miles, miles, miles!\n\n FREYJA\n [_To Baldur._]\n He loves me, yet his looks are terrible.\n He saw me, yet he smiled not. Flowers I gave him,\n But he destroyed them. Sorrowful he is,\n Yet hath no tears in his eyes.\u2014What shall we do?\n\n FENRIS\n Free me, Freyja; fair art thou, froward\u2014\n Go we together into greenwood glad.\n Burns thine eyebeam bright as the bitch-wolf\u2019s,\n Longeth Fenris in thy lair to lie;\n Longeth to chase thee.\n\n THE PACK\n Ulfr! Ulfr!\n\n FENRIS\n Chafe, champ thee\u2014\n\n THE PACK\n Ulfr! Ulfr!\n\n FENRIS\n Leave thee with child.\n\n FREYJA\n Baldur, what reeling darkness snows around us\n From heaven? The rose of dawn is stung with blight.\n\n ODIN\n [_Aside._]\n O mystery! O will behind the will,\n How shall this end?\n\n BALDUR\n From heaven no darkness falls;\n It is the glamour of his woeful eyes,\n That spet the night within them.\n\n FREYJA\n [_Half wildly, whispers at Baldur\u2019s ear._]\n It must cease!\n The shy bird hath his song within the wood,\n The shepherd\u2019s call is sweet along the hills,\n To husband and to lover are the sounds\n Of gracious voices in the home places,\u2014\n To _him_, the ceaseless clanging of his chain.\n\n BALDUR\n O Freyja, we will minister to him,\n Until for him the shy bird\u2019s song is sweet,\n And sweet the shepherd\u2019s call along the hills.\n Fenris!\n\n [_Swinging from the brink of the crater, he lets himself\n down. As he descends, Fenris springs toward him to the\n limit of his chain._]\n\n FENRIS\n Hail, Baldur! hail, brother! Boast thy beauty now;\n Woo now and wive thee, welcome to Fenris\u2019 woe.\n All elf-gifts thou asked Odin gave thee,\n Sunlight, summer, song for solace,\n Fair face, freedom, Freyja to friend.\n Me what gave he? Mark!\u2014Mountain-mist, madness,\n Monstrous made me, marr\u2019d, wolf-masked,\n Cramped in snow-crater, frost-crusted, chained;\n Numb, naked, night-winds gnaw me,\n Blistereth black ice, biteth my bones.\n\n BALDUR\n Thou shalt be free.\n\n FENRIS\n Me mocketh, mocketh! Ai!\n\n BALDUR\n Fenris, my brother, hear me!\n I bring thee freedom.\n\n FENRIS\n [_Holding out his chain to Baldur._]\n Liest;\u2014loose me!\n\n BALDUR\n Hush! I know the secret\n How thou mayst slip these shackles. I have learned\n From Odin how he binds thee. Wilt thou hear?\n\n FENRIS\n [_Craftily beckoning Baldur under the shadow of a cleft._]\n Tss! Wise is the One-Eyed. Tss! read me thy riddle now.\n\n BALDUR\n Know then, O Fenris, Odin of himself\n Is weak to hold thee. Of his kin, another\n Conniveth with him.\n\n FENRIS\n Kin, sayst?\n\n BALDUR\n Thou, his son. Thou forgest\n Chains stubborner than Odin\u2019s, links of lust\n Mightier than these of steel, which are themselves\n The might of these thou wearest. O my brother,\n Lay off thine own, and Odin\u2019s shall be straw.\n\n FENRIS\n Thus readest thy riddle?\n\n BALDUR\n Thus findest thou freedom: do our father\u2019s will.\n His law is wisdom. All the folk of heaven\n And earth and hell obey him gladly; thou\u2014\n Submit thou also; make thine oath to Odin.\n\n FENRIS\n Oathless be Odin; am _I_ earth\u2019s overlord!\n\n [_Odin beckons to the eastward with his spear. From the\n distance comes a flash of fire and faint thunder._]\n\n BALDUR\n Hush, brother, hush! He hears; for thy pain\u2019s sake\n Remember he is Allfather. Be meek.\n\n FENRIS\n Am _I_ Asa\u2019s heir!\u2014I\u2014I\u2014I am Allfather!\n\n [_By a dazzling river of light and thunder-peal, the whole\n scene is riven. On the peaks at either side appear_\n LOKI _and_ THOR. _Loki holds in his\n hand a serpentine whip of many lashes, as of glittering\n brass; Thor, a white hammer. The Pack cower, moaning;\n Fenris stands glaring, with head bent backward as in\n sudden pain._]\n\n ODIN\n Hail, Loki! Welcome, Thor! in happy time.\n Are ye not come to crown me Odin the Wise?\n Shake out the live scorn of thy withering laughter,\n Loki, over the world: Odin hath been defied!\n Hammer it, Thor, on the clanged doors of hell,\n Till their intestine thunders toll our doom\u2014\n \u201cThe wolf shall sit alone, at Valhal\u2019s feast,\n And eat of Odin\u2019s heart!\u201d\n\n FREYJA\n Alas! What words\n\n ODIN\n This is mine heir. Hath it not spoken? This\n Shall sit one day in Odin\u2019s seat. Mine heir!\n The heir of all the gods. Behold then, gods,\n How this, your prince, receives his tutelage.\n\n BALDUR\n Father, what wilt thou do?\n\n ODIN\n Tame him, the tameless;\n The eternal goad against the eternal stone.\n Yea, though I tame him not till doomsday darken.\n [_To Loki._]\n Loosen thy scourge.\n\n [_Held by his chain, Fenris flees wildly in circles, and\n seeking to hide himself, finally crouches in terror,\n centre. He is prevented from entering the cavern by\n Thor, who stands there._]\n\n FENRIS\n Anarch! Ai! anarch! Anarch! Ulfr! Ulfr!\n\n BALDUR AND FREYJA\n Have pity!\n\n ODIN\n Pity ask\n Of him; this wolf must reign or I. Strike, Loki!\n Let thy bright lashes scorch with all their snakes\n Till the live, brassy serum eats and crawls\n Into the writhing blood. Begin!\n\n BALDUR AND FREYJA\n Have mercy!\n\n [_As Loki swings his whip of fire, the Pack beneath fall on\n their faces. Amid them Fenris crouches at half stature.\n Baldur and Freyja kneel as frozen, with lifted hands\n toward Odin. Thus in sudden twilight and silence, fine\n silent lashes of unintermittent lightning uncoil and\n coil, as the scourge is whirled, around the cringing\n body of the wolf. A shudder only reveals his extreme\n pangs._]\n\n ODIN\n Cease! [_Loki ceases._] Wolf, what of thine oath?\n\n FENRIS\n Oathless am I.\n\n BALDUR\n Fenris, be tamed!\n\n FENRIS\n I\u2014I\u2014I am Allfather!\n\n ODIN\n Sublime inanity! heroic ape!\n This strong defiance were itself divine,\n And thou a titan-martyr, had thy pride\n One rational aim commensurate with thy woe.\n But all thy suffering is purposeless.\n Strike, Thor! Make of his obdurate heart thine anvil.\n\n THE PACK\n [_Some fawning toward Odin, others seeking\n protection of Fenris._]\n Heil, Othinn! Ulfr, heil!\n\n [_As Fenris, by a gesture of rage, drives these from him\n into the cavern, Thor raises his hammer. Immediate night\n shuts out the scene. In this surge of darkness the\n deep rolling of thunder swells and culminates, as by\n waves, in the blank burst of the thunder-bolt. Through\n a half-lull, amid moaning of the Pack, are heard voices\n from the crater._]\n\n BALDUR\u2019S VOICE\n She leaps. Hold, Thor! She casteth herself down.\n\n FREYJA\u2019S VOICE\n Beat on my heart, for mine containeth his.\n\n ODIN\n Light! light once more!\n [_The thunder dies away. Sudden dawn breaks, ripening\n soon to daylight. Within the crater, Freyja is\n revealed, standing over the exhausted form of\n Fenris._]\n Freyja, what hast thou dared?\n\n FREYJA\n The bolt of iron and the scourge of brass\n Avail not, Odin.\u2014Let me conquer him\n For thee!\n\n ODIN\n How wouldst thou tame him?\n\n FREYJA\n By my love,\n Yea, and the exceeding might of Baldur\u2019s love,\n Whose gracious arts of poesie shall aid me.\n Grant him to us!\n\n BALDUR\n Grant him to us, O father!\n\n ODIN\n [_Going apart._]\n O thou unknown Destroyer and Deliverer,\n Rape not again from me this nestling hope!\n [_He descends into the crater._]\n\n BALDUR AND FREYJA\n Grant him to us, Allfather, to be tamed!\n\n FENRIS\n [_Clutching the snow at their feet, feebly._]\n I\u2014I am Allfather!\n\n ODIN\n Lovers, I grant him to you; but not here,\n For this concession must be darkly hid\n Till you have proved its beauteous consummation.\n Not, therefore, here I grant, but yonder.\n [_Indicates the earth below them._]\n There\n You shall enact a vast experiment,\n Whereof the pregnant sequel none may know\n Save only him, the master magian,\n Whose prentices we gods and titans are,\n And the blind wills of men his medium.\n For he, with silent face from us averted,\n Holds in the awful hollow of his hand\n The world\u2014his crucible, and plies with them\n Ordeals of anguish and of ecstasy.\n Therefore the earth must be your place of passion,\n And there in slumber, even as mortals dream,\n Slumb\u2019ring, that they are bright immortal gods,\n You shall be mortals, and shall walk as men,\n Forgetful of your immortality.\n\n [_Faintly, as from a great distance, there rises a sound of\n many voices crying, \u201cOdin! Asa Odin!\u201d and the rumour of\n beasts in pain._]\n\n Hark, now! from far below us, the deep moan\n And lowing of a mortal sacrifice.\n Speak, Thor! What seest thou at Odin\u2019s altar?\n\n THOR\n A mighty hunter and a twisted dwarf\n Make sacrifice; rivals they seem, in feud,\n And claim the hand of Thordis, thy priest\u2019s daughter,\n And the priest cries on Odin for a portent\n To choose which of the brothers shall be bridegroom.\n\n ODIN\n Lo, then, my portent! We ourselves, we four,\n Shall be those rival brothers, priest and bride;\n Loki and Thor shall ravish them with death\n That we, in resurrection, may take on\n Their bodies as our mortal vestiture.\n For I will act with you this mystery,\n Dreaming myself the priest of mine own shrine;\n And Freyja, child, thy goddess heart shall beat\n Within the heart of Thordis, mortal maid;\n Thy boundless spirit, Baldur, shall be pinched\n Within the gnarled limbs of the stunted dwarf,\n Twisted with pain, as now thy brother is;\n Thou, envious wolf, jealous of Baldur\u2019s joys!\n Thy feverish being shall invest the power\n And glorious stature of the hunter. So\n Shalt thou have scope and license measureless\n To woo the heart of Freyja. So shall ye,\n Lovers, make proof of your conjoin\u00e8d love\n And troth\u00e8d meekness, whether these be strong\n To tame this wolf, and from his blinding lusts\n Evolve a nobler consciousness, or weak\n To let themselves be blasted, and the world\n Itself eclipsed in universal chaos.\n\n FREYJA\n If we be strong?\n\n ODIN\n The wolf-god shall be tamed.\n\n FENRIS\n [_In rage, half rising._]\n Oathless am I unto Odin ever!\n [_He sinks back, faint._]\n\n BALDUR\n [_To Odin._]\n And tamed?\n\n ODIN\n He shall go free.\n\n FREYJA\n Even in such freedom\n As ours?\n\n ODIN\n O Freyja, larger liberty\u2014\n The mightier peace which mortals only know\u2014\n Even death.\n\n FENRIS\n Freedom! Anarch\u2014anarch! Freedom!\n\n LOKI\n Hail, Odin; smoketh thine altar afar.\n Burneth to thee the cloven bullock\u2019s heart;\n The sacrificers watch and wait thy sign.\n\n ODIN\n Let them behold it! Thou and Thor, stretch out\n Your wings in storm, and ravish up their souls\n With night and death.\n [_To Baldur and Freyja._]\n Come, you my children! Now\n Shall our immortal fires be mixed with clay\n In the great crucible, and these our spirits\n No more shall know themselves for gods, until\n The shadowy Master shows the great solution.\n\n [_In faint lightning and thunder, Loki and Thor disappear.\n Odin ascends the crater, followed by Baldur and Freyja.\n Climbing together the steep slope, these two look\n backward upon the prostrate wolf who, following them\n with his eyes, moves not until they reach the summit.\n There, against a sky of sunlit storm, Freyja pauses and\n stretches forth her arm to him._]\n\n FREYJA\n Dear wolf!\n\n FENRIS\n [_Starts up madly._]\n Freyja! death\u2014freedom! freedom! death!\u2014Now\u2014now!\n\n [_As Freyja and the gods pass from sight beyond the cliffs,\n Fenris gnaws at his chain in inarticulate fury._]\n\n\n\n\nACT I\n\n\nSCENE I: Outside a tribal temple.\n\n _The gable beams are low; only the entrance end of the\n building, set at an angle, on the left, is visible. In\n the distance rises a snow-capped volcano, its slopes\u2014in\n the nearer background\u2014pied with the young leaves and\n blossoms of early spring; against these, jutting from\n behind the temple, a gallows-tree. On the right, at\n back, a solitary pine of great age sways solemn boughs\n over half the scene, the centre of which is occupied by\n a vast monolith, or boulder, tapering upward to a jagged\n end. The face of this stone, graved deeply with runes,\n is (on its lower half) dark carmine and smooth as ivory;\n from behind it blue smoke is rising; before it stands an\n altar of stone, on which is set a silver bowl._\n\n _In front of this altar stands_ INGIMUND, _the\n temple priest, clad in a sleeveless leathern smock to\n the knees; his arms are reddened with sacrifice; from\n his throat\u2014beneath his long, grey hair\u2014hangs an image\n of Odin; on his right wrist a ring of plain gold; in\n his left hand a spear. On either side of him an altar\n priest holds a bunch of sprinkling twigs. From the\n temple four other priests are bearing a slaughtered\n bullock to the fire behind the rune-stone. Massed in\n the right foreground are_ EGIL _and his men;\n on the left_, ARFI _and his men. Egil, noble\n of stature, stands moodily filing the grooves of a\n crossbow; Arfi, bent and dwarfed, sits with his ear close\n to a harp, which he thrums softly._\n\n _From the right background, beneath the pine, enters,\n singing, a procession of the folk, escorting an ark\n on wheels, drawn by oxen, whose flanks are wreathed\n with flowers, and whose horns are adorned with gold.\n Following the ark, which passes on into the temple,\n horses and sheep are led to the sacrifice. These, as\n they pass before him, Ingimund marks with the sign of a\n spear, while the altar priests sprinkle them with blood\n from the silver bowl._\n\n _At the entrance of the temple stand_ THORDIS _and\n her_ VIRGINS, _who take from the beasts their\n garlands and hang them on the doors and outer walls.\n The men and women of the throng, chanting to a barbaric\n cadence, lift up their arms and faces to the sky._\n\n THE FOLK\n Wanderer of earth and air,\n Walker on the giant flood,\n Odin! Asa Odin!\n Pilgrim of the storm!\n\n Lyer in the Sybil\u2019s lair,\n Reader of the runes of blood,\n Thou who hearkenest all prayer\u2014\n World-spirit and worm,\n Odin! Asa Odin!\n Hear us, Allfather!\n\n [_Distant thunder._]\n\n FRIDA\n Thordis, he hears.\n\n THE VIRGINS\n He hears!\n\n THE FOLK\n He hears!\n\n YORUL\n [_To Rolf._]\n Behold\n The dwarf, where he sits shrivelled by his harp.\n Ho, Arfi! hear\u2019st thou Odin? Hast invited\n The trolls, thy cousins, to the bridal?\n\n WULDOR\n Silence!\n He listens to the stars behind the storm.\n\n YORUL\n The tree-frogs, Wuldor. He, thy master, is\n Their father.\n\n WULDOR\n So thy master is their uncle.\n\n YORUL\n My master shall be bridegroom, never fear!\n Hath Arfi slain his boar?\n\n WULDOR\n Hath Egil sung\n The slaying of his boar?\n\n YORUL\n Hath Arfi leashed\n The wild stag by the horns and led him home?\n\n WULDOR\n Hath Egil read the runes on Odin\u2019s stone?\n\n YORUL\n Weaklings and women ye!\n\n WULDOR\n Thou liest, Yorul.\n\n YORUL\n [_Strikes Wuldor._]\n\n Ho, Egil, here!\n\n WULDOR\n [_Retaliating._]\n Ho, Arfi!\n\n [_The followers, from either side, spring forward and fight\n fiercely. Ingimund strikes among them with his spear._]\n\n INGIMUND\n Fools of anger!\n This ground is Odin\u2019s; he alone may judge\n Which of your masters shall betroth his priestess.\n Back! and await his sign.\u2014Come, Thordis.\n\n FRIDA\n [_Parting with Thordis by the temple._]\n Joy\n And love be thine, dear lady.\n\n [_Leaving her maidens, Thordis comes quietly from the temple\n and stands before the rune-stone and Ingimund, who, with\n his spear, beckons also Egil and Arfi. As these join\n Thordis, the altar priests, with a heavy chain of gold,\n enclose the four in a circular space, while the folk\n chant as before._]\n\n THE FOLK\n Save us, Lord, from lovers\u2019 hate,\n Shelter us from brothers\u2019 feud!\n Odin! Asa Odin!\n Only thou art wise.\n\n Choose unto this maid a mate\n Hallowed by thy sanctitude,\n Send thine omen while we wait,\n Making sacrifice.\n Odin! Asa Odin!\n Save us, Allfather!\n\n [_Thunder; storm gathers and the scene grows darker, as\n bigger clouds of smoke roll upward from behind the\n rune-stone._]\n\n INGIMUND\n [_Removing the gold circlet from his wrist._]\n Here,\n Your right hands here\u2014all three\u2014on Odin\u2019s ring.\n [_To Egil, then Arfi._]\n Press deeper in the sand thy foot, now thine.\n [_To the Priests._]\n Fill up the footprints with the sacred blood.\n Brother in brother\u2019s footstep, hark your oath\u2014\n Your oath to abide by Asa Odin\u2019s will.\n\n [_As Egil and Arfi grasp the ring, lightning begins to play\n over the scene, and thunder deepens the voices of the\n people._]\n\n THE FOLK\n Odin! Odin! Asa Odin!\n Send upon thy folk a portent!\n\n INGIMUND\n [_Lifting his face and spear toward the sky, intones._]\n By thy runes forever writ\n On Allwaker\u2019s ear and Allswift\u2019s hoof,\n On Sleipni\u2019s teeth and the sledge-bands,\n On the Wolf\u2019s claw and the eagle\u2019s beak,\n On the bloody wings and the bridge\u2019s end!\u2014\n\n THE FOLK\n Odin! Odin! Asa Odin!\n Send upon thy folk a portent!\n\n INGIMUND\n By thy runes forever writ\n On Brage\u2019s tongue and the bear\u2019s paw,\n On the midwife\u2019s palm and the amber god,\n On Norna\u2019s nail and the owl\u2019s neb,\n On wine and wort and the Sibyl\u2019s seat!\u2014\n\n THE FOLK\n Odin! Odin! Asa Odin!\n Send thy portent, O Allfather!\n\n FRIDA\n Look! look! himself doth come.\n\n THE FOLK\n Fly! fly! Oh, fly!\n\n FRIDA\n Himself doth come, and with him all the gods!\n\n [_Amid supernatural darkness and thunder-peal, Ingimund,\n Thordis, Egil, and Arfi are struck to the earth, and\n all the people flee, except Yorul and Frida, who crouch\n beside the temple._]\n\n THE FOLK\n [_In the distance._]\n Bow down! bow down!\n [_Pause; the passing of the storm; silence._]\n\n FRIDA\n [_Rising._]\n Yorul!\u2014You do not speak.\n Yorul!\n\n YORUL\n O Frida, hush!\n\n FRIDA\n And did you see them?\n Four were they all together, and they passed\n Like fire, and four returned, in robes of flame,\n But paler.\n\n YORUL\n May be so; I saw them not.\n\n FRIDA\n Two others stood on Odin\u2019s stone, and one\n Laughed loud, and whirled a whip of blazing brass,\n And one thrust through his beard a smoking hammer.\n\n YORUL\n May be; may be. What did you say? Speak not!\n [_Embracing her._]\n O heart of mine, thou beatest yet. We live.\n The sun\u2014how still it is! What\u2019s that?\n\n FRIDA\n A bird\n Singing under the temple\u2019s eaves.\n\n YORUL\n And all\n Are fled. What be those four that lie so still?\n\n [_Together they approach the bodies._]\n\n FRIDA\n Alas! O lady dear!\n\n YORUL\n Dead! they are dead.\n Egil, my master! Odin\u2019s voice hath slain him.\n Cursed be Odin!\n\n FRIDA\n Yorul\u2014take them back,\n Those words! Their sacrilege shall work us woe.\n\n YORUL\n What matter? He is dead.\n\n FRIDA\n Oh, do not think it!\n Perhaps they sleep. Look how their brows still wear\n High thoughts. I think they dream. Go! fetch a leech.\n\n YORUL\n A leech for death?\n\n FRIDA\n Go quickly, Yorul!\n\n YORUL\n Well!\n [_Going out._]\n A leech here for the dead! A leech, ho!\n [_Exit._]\n\n FRIDA\n [_Alone with the four bodies, stands before\n the rune-stone._]\n Odin!\n Have pity on the dead; let them awake!\n [_Slowly the bodies rise and look upon her;\n she crouches before them._]\n Ah me! Your eyes! They burn. O turn away\n Your bright eternal eyes!\n\n [_She falls unconscious. Egil, who has risen\n with the gold altar chain wound about him,\n gnaws it._]\n\n EGIL\n Death! Freedom! freedom!\n\n [_Enter Yorul and a_ LEECH, _followed by the folk_.]\n\n THE LEECH\n Who calls for leechcraft here?\n\n YORUL\n [_Stands bewildered._]\n A miracle!\n\n THORDIS\n [_Bends over Frida._]\n The child is stricken.\n\n ARFI\n Let me lift her, Thordis.\n\n YORUL\n A miracle! O Frida, speak to me!\n\n THE LEECH\n [_To the folk._]\n Stand off! Give air!\n\n WULDOR\n [_To the folk._]\n Hath Yorul then deceived us?\n\n ROLF\n Behold, they live!\n\n FRIDA\n [_Rising, faintly._]\n Thanks; lead me to the temple.\n\n INGIMUND\n What hath befallen?\n\n WULDOR\n Hail, Ingimund! The portent\n Of Odin hath befallen.\n\n INGIMUND\n Saw ye, or what?\n\n [_Wuldor and the folk whisper among themselves.\n Yorul supports Frida toward the temple._]\n\n YORUL\n But how? What chanced?\n\n FRIDA\n Their eyes! their burning eyes!\n Oh, I have seen their souls: they are not theirs.\n Four bright ones came, four pale ones went away.\n\n YORUL\n Clean reft of wit!\n\n FRIDA\n Oh, shut me in the dark!\n\n [_Taking Frida from Yorul, the temple virgins lead\n her into the temple._]\n\n INGIMUND\n [_To Wuldor._]\n Saw ye, I say, or what?\n\n WULDOR\n Ask Yorul, father.\n\n INGIMUND\n Speak thou! What hath befallen?\n\n YORUL\n [_Returning dazed from the temple._]\n Odin is wise;\n Ye that were dead are risen from the dead,\n And Frida, my betroth\u00e8d, is reft of reason.\u2014\n She said it would be, for I cursed him.\u2014Egil!\n Master and lord, welcome to life!\n\n [_Egil, who, with fixed gaze, has been eyeing Thordis,\n starts wildly, paces back and forth, dragging the altar\n chain as he moves._]\n\n EGIL\n A verdict!\n A verdict, priest and earls! Thordis is mine.\n\n EGIL\u2019S MEN\n Thordis for Egil!\n\n ARFI\u2019S MEN\n Thordis for Arfi!\n\n INGIMUND\n Peace!\n Heaven\u2019s omen still is dark, and Odin\u2019s sign\n Ambiguous. Not one, but four of us,\n His hand hath stricken. Wherefore thus I read\n His riddle: Thordis shall herself decide.\n\n THORDIS\n Father, not I!\n\n INGIMUND\n This ancient feud must end.\n These two have sworn to abide by Odin\u2019s will;\n His will it is that thou make choice of them.\n Hearken their pleas, and choose.\n\n THORDIS\n To one must I\n Give pain?\n\n INGIMUND\n To one give joy. Speak, Arfi.\n\n ARFI\n Lady,\n That those who love are blind I pray be so\n That, loving, so you may behold me not\u2014\n What thing I seem, but only hear my voice\u2014\n What truth I am. Thordis, even now I dreamed\n A dream more high and awful than the clouds\n And breathless peaks afire of poesie:\n We stood together on the morning\u2019s brink;\n Crater and frozen cliff and snowy scar\n Hung, avalanche on avalanche, below,\n Below them still,\u2014the world! You spoke to me;\n Sweeter than measures of imagined song\n Before the harp is struck, your voice! \u201cListen!\u201d you said;\n And echoing from scar and crater rose\n The clanging of a chain. You clung to me;\n You clung to me and spoke not.\u2014I have done.\n\n INGIMUND\n Egil!\n\n [_Springing forward, Egil seizes Thordis\u2019s hand,\n which he raises to his lips._]\n\n EGIL\n I love\u2014I love thee!\n\n [_He bites her hand. Screaming, she draws away from\n him and clings to the dwarf._]\n\n THORDIS\n Arfi!\n\n ARFI\n [_Facing Egil._]\n Brother!\n\n WULDOR\n Blood! He hath bit her hand. Ho, sacrilege!\n\n EGIL\n The maid is mine.\n\n ARFI\n The maid is Odin\u2019s.\n\n ROLF\n [_Seizing Yorul\u2019s arm, points at Egil._]\n See!\n His eyes grow small and blaze!\n\n YORUL\n He is possessed;\n Some god afflicts him.\n\n [_With a gesture of fury, Egil rushes upon Arfi._]\n\n EGIL\n Mine!\n\n INGIMUND\n [_Stays him._]\n The maid is Arfi\u2019s,\n For she herself hath chosen him.\n\n ARFI\n [_Quietly._]\n A clout,\n To stanch the blood.\n\n WULDOR\n [_As Arfi binds her hand, gazes on Thordis,\n whose eyes have closed._]\n O fair beyond this world!\n\n EGIL\n [_Clutching the air, in passion for coherence._]\n A rape! a rape! Thordis for Egil!\n\n YORUL\n [_Drawing._]\n Thordis\n For Egil, here!\n\n ARFI\u2019S MEN\n Thordis for Arfi!\n\n EGIL\u2019S MEN\n Egil!\n\n INGIMUND\n Beware! Put back your weapons all, on pain\n Of Odin\u2019s wrath.\n\n THE FOLK\n [_Murmur._]\n Remember Odin\u2019s wrath.\n\n EGIL\n Egil recks not for Odin\u2019s wrath nor will.\n Who fights for Thordis?\n\n INGIMUND\n This is blasphemy.\n\n EGIL\n Who fights with Egil for the maiden?\n\n YORUL\n I,\n And all of us.\n\n EGIL\u2019S MEN\n Till death.\n\n INGIMUND\n Enough, mine earls!\n The patience of the lord of peace hath end.\n Egil, thy words and deed have violated\n The sacred place of Odin. Thou art banned!\n The lord hath put thee from his high place. Go!\n I cast thee forth, and all who follow thee.\n\n THE FOLK\n [_Falling back._]\n Accurst! accurst!\n\n EGIL\n [_Stands alone in a great circle._]\n Behold they cast him forth!\n Egil is banned! Who fights with Egil now?\n\n YORUL\n I, master!\n\n ONE OF EGIL\u2019S MEN\n Fly! he is accurst.\n\n [_The men hesitate; then all\u2014except twelve, including\n Yorul, who step into the circle\u2014depart fearfully._]\n\n THE TWELVE\n Hail, Egil!\n\n [_The folk cry out; some go from the scene, others\n into the temple._]\n\n EGIL\n [_Seizing up with both hands the silver bowl._]\n Hail, liegemen! Twelve and one, we are enough\n To vow ourselves to vengeance \u2019gainst the world.\n A pledge, here! Ho, a pledge to groom and bride!\n Drink pledge with me, in Odin\u2019s altar blood.\n Thordis and vengeance! Hail!\n\n THE TWELVE\n Thordis and vengeance!\n\n [_Egil drinks from the silver bowl._]\n\n SCENE II: The interior of Egil\u2019s lodge in the\n forest; toward twilight.\n\n _The room is roughly built of logs, long cross-beams\n overhead. From these (in the right corner, back) hang\n suspended the bodies and skins of antelope, bear, and\n wild game; and beneath these\u2014piled upon a bench against\n the wall\u2014a heap of furs and hides. Centre, back, a\n door. Left, in the earthen floor, a hearth with ashes;\n above it, a hole in the roof. Beyond this hearth, left,\n sitting at the open window_, FRIDA, _alone. She\n looks out dreamily toward the forest, from which horns\n echo and answer. Suddenly she starts up, gazes intently,\n gives a low cry, and, dodging down as she passes the\n window, springs across to the heap of hides, among which\n she conceals herself. After a pause, the door opens_;\n EGIL _enters, panting\u2014evidently pursued. His\n brow is bleeding, and he limps. Turning to bar the\n door, he lets fall a bloodied wolf\u2019s skin. Immediately\n he snatches it up caressingly; gazes around, listens\n enraged to the horns, limps swiftly to the hearth,\n hesitates; then, as a sudden horn-blast resounds close\n by, falls on his knees, digs ferociously in the ashes\n with his two hands like an animal, thrusts the wolf\u2019s\n skin in the cavity, and covers it over with the ashes,\n carefully replacing the charred brands on top. Swiftly,\n then, binding up his bleeding brow and thigh, he unbars\n the door, seizes a whip from a corner, and springs\n stealthily out of the window. At the same moment, horses\n are heard to gallop up to the lodge; the door bursts\n open_; YORUL _and_ ROLF _appear on the\n sill._\n\n YORUL\n He came this way. Look here, Rolf, in the sand\u2014\n And here: are not these paw-prints?\n\n ROLF\n May be so.\n I saw him last back yonder in the forest.\n\n YORUL\n I saw him slinking hither across the open.\n Look, here again; here\u2019s blood.\n\n ROLF\n What! was he wounded?\n\n YORUL\n Did not you see?\n\n ROLF\n You know I did not; tell me.\n\n YORUL\n Twice; once across the eye, once in the shank.\n \u2019Twas Ingimund struck both wounds.\n\n ROLF\n Ingimund!\n\n YORUL\n Yes, when we left you, Egil rode ahead,\n I and the others after. We had ridden\n A half-mile, when I heard our master shout:\n \u201cHere comes our brother with his bride ahunting.\u201d\n And sure, there burst into our narrow glen\n Horse, hound, and horn, the whole bright cavalcade;\n And Thordis rode ahead, and Arfi next,\n Last, Ingimund. We reined our horses back\u2014\n\n ROLF\n Not to pollute the lady with the sight\n Of your accursed faces, eh?\n\n YORUL\n Say rather\n To keep our scanty numbers hid.\n\n ROLF\n Well\u2014well?\n\n YORUL\n Well, I had hardly reined back in the wood\n And Thordis passed me by\u2014Man, it was awful!\n Under the very hoofs of the dwarf\u2019s horse\u2014\n Out of the earth, it seemed\u2014there sprang a wolf\n And bit the stallion\u2019s loin. The horse rolled over\u2014\n A wolf\u2014a giant wolf!\n\n ROLF\n What then?\n\n YORUL\n I say\n It stood as high as that, Rolf, yet I swear\n If it were not a wolf, yet what\u2014\n\n ROLF\n What happened?\n\n YORUL\n There rang a great shout and the riders all\n Leapt to the ground where, in the midst of them,\n Tangled together with the kicking steed,\n Rolled the huge wolf and Arfi; him the beast\n Held by the gorge between his grinning jaws,\n Throttling him like a whelp. But Ingimund\u2014\n\n ROLF\n Hel have him! Did he save the dwarf?\n\n YORUL\n He dragged\n The wolf away, and struck him with his spear\n Twice, as I told you. But the beast escaped.\n\n ROLF\n And Arfi lives?\n\n YORUL\n I know not. I made after\n The wolf, and met you as I tracked him here.\n\n ROLF\n But what said Egil?\n\n YORUL\n I was too amazed\n To look for him.\n\n ROLF\n There winds his horn in the wood,\n And yonder he comes riding with the others.\n Come; we\u2019ll go meet them.\n [_Exit._]\n\n [_As Yorul is following Rolf, Frida steps forward._]\n\n FRIDA\n [_Speaks low._]\n Yorul!\n\n YORUL\n _Her_ voice! Frida! Frida!\n\n FRIDA\n Keep me!\n\n YORUL\n Stand farther off. O girl, what brings you here?\n How found you out this solitary place?\n\n FRIDA\n I left my mistress\u2019 side at dawn, and searched\n All day the forest.\n\n YORUL\n Little Frida, thou!\n\n FRIDA\n Come with me!\n\n YORUL\n Stand away! You have forgot\n I am accurst. This place is Egil\u2019s lodge,\n And all who dwell here banned and castaway.\n\n FRIDA\n Where you are must I fear to be?\n\n YORUL\n Yes, Frida,\n For Ingimund has cursed me with my master.\n\n FRIDA\n Leave him.\n\n YORUL\n Whom?\n\n FRIDA\n Leave him, Yorul.\n\n YORUL\n Leave whom, child?\n\n FRIDA\n Egil, your master.\n\n YORUL\n [_In amazement._]\n Frida!\n\n FRIDA\n Hush!\n [_She goes to the hearth._]\n\n YORUL\n [_In scorn._]\n Desert\n My lord! His liegeman, I a traitor!\n\n FRIDA\n Look.\n [_She brushes back the ashes, revealing the beast\u2019s head._]\n\n YORUL\n The wolf! By heaven, dead! What\u2014_you_ killed him?\n\n FRIDA\n No.\n\n YORUL\n And flayed, the very brute! Here are the marks\n Of Ingimund, his spear. Saw you the beast\n Alive?\n\n FRIDA\n Yes.\n\n YORUL\n Here?\n\n FRIDA\n I watched it limping here,\n Wounded, from out the forest.\n\n YORUL\n Ha! I said so.\n Here to the very door-sill?\n\n FRIDA\n Yes; it pushed\n The door ajar.\n\n YORUL\n But\u2014\n\n FRIDA\n Egil entered.\n\n YORUL\n Egil!\n\n FRIDA\n His brow was bleeding and he limped. He buried\n That thing beneath the ashes, and sprang forth\n Out at the window.\n\n YORUL\n Buried this?\n\n FRIDA\n As dogs\n Bury their secrets, claw and nozzle.\u2014Yorul!\n\n YORUL\n You _saw_?\n\n FRIDA\n I saw. O Yorul, \u2019tis a werewolf.\n\n YORUL\n [_Drops the hide and steps back._]\n Ah! do not name it!\n\n FRIDA\n Leave him. Come away!\n\n YORUL\n Bleeding\u2014his brow, you said?\n\n FRIDA\n Yes; come away!\n\n YORUL\n So be it.\n\n FRIDA\n Gracious Odin! he will come.\n\n YORUL\n Since that wild day he bit your mistress\u2019 hand\n It hath misgiven me the gods torment him.\n Once, for seven days, ceaseless he paced this hall,\n Spoke not, nor ate, but ground and ground his teeth;\n And in the night, once, when I watched him sleeping,\n His eyelids lay rolled back and filled with fire.\n\n FRIDA\n That day the storm burst over Odin\u2019s stone\n And I beheld those mighty four in flame\u2014\n Oh, since then, Yorul, they have changed, my mistress\n Even as your master, save that she has grown\n Lovelier than herself, and seems to bear\n About with her the loadstone of desire,\n For the poor hinds and churls that wait upon her\n Serve her with souls enamoured. If I thought\n You would believe my vision, I could tell\u2014\n But come, Yorul. Yorul! you will not come?\n\n YORUL\n Never! Stop, Frida; do not name the thing\n He is. It matters not to me; for me\n He is my lord, my master; that is all.\n\n FRIDA\n But if\u2014\n\n YORUL\n If he were that eternal beast\n Whom Odin chains until the dawn of doom,\n Fenris, the wolf\u2014\n\n FRIDA\n No, say not that!\n\n YORUL\n I say\n Still it should matter not; I am his liegeman,\n His vassal, and his bondslave. I will serve him.\n\n [_Enter, with his followers, Egil, cracking his whip._]\n\n EGIL\n The wolf! Where is your wolf?\n\n ROLF\n We tracked him here.\n\n EGIL\n Lies! lies! He lurks yet in the forest.\n\n ERIC\n [_Pointing at Yorul, who holds up the skin._]\n Look!\n\n THE MEN\n The wolf!\n\n EGIL\n [_Leaping upon Yorul, flings him to the ground._]\n Traitor!\n\n YORUL\n Hold, master\u2014\n\n FRIDA\n [_Coming forward._]\n Save him!\n\n ROLF\n Thou!\n Thou, maiden, here?\n\n FRIDA\n Oh, help him!\n\n ERIC\n [_With the others\u2019 help, separates the two._]\n Egil! off!\n\n EGIL\n A ferret, ho! a ferret, earls; hath scent\n And sight and hearing\u2014what, for rats? No, no,\n For wolves!\n\n ROLF\n [_Aside to Eric._]\n The madness!\n\n YORUL\n Master, \u2019tis the wolf.\n I killed him.\n\n EGIL\n Killed him? Thou?\n [_Craftily._]\n What wolf?\n\n YORUL\n The beast\n That bit the dwarf.\n\n EGIL\n Dead; so \u2019tis dead. Let see!\n [_Taking the pelt from Yorul, he drops it on the hearth._]\n It should, methinks, be buried too. _Thy_ kill?\n\n YORUL\n Mine, Egil.\n\n EGIL\n [_With his foot, covering the pelt with the ashes._]\n Killed and flayed. Huzza, mine earls,\n For Yorul and his kill.\n\n THE MEN\n [_Gather round Yorul._]\n Huzza!\n\n EGIL\n \u2019Tis buried.\n [_Aside._]\n He knows, he knows; I will avenge me.\n [_Looks keenly at Rolf._]\n Well,\n What art thou gazing on?\n\n ROLF\n On nothing.\n\n EGIL\n Liest,\n Liest; art gazing on my brow. What, what?\n \u2019Tis bandaged, ah! What then? What then, I say?\n\n ERIC\n Why, he is wounded.\n\n EGIL\n Traitors! traitors all!\n Aha, by Loki, but you lie. I fell\u2014\n You lie! My horse was diked. I fell and gashed me,\n My brow, my thigh. Why not my brow and thigh?\n May not a huntsman fall from \u2019s saddle? Liars!\n I limp, but not for that. I _will_ limp!\n [_Suddenly changing._]\n Hark!\n [_He springs to the window._]\n\n YORUL\n What dost thou hear?\n\n EGIL\n They smell the blood. They come\n To dig it up. Their nozzles scour the gorse.\n Yorul! Yorul!\n\n YORUL\n [_To whom Egil clings._]\n \u2019Tis nothing.\n\n EGIL\n They have found\n The scent. You cannot make them lose it, Yorul.\n You loop and loop for miles, plunge in the lake,\n Swim over, double through the thickets, spring\n All-feet from rock to rock in the ravine,\n Crouch in the fern and listen: still you hear them\n Belling behind you, all their big chests panting,\n Their red tongues lolled, the great hot breathing,\u2014bloodhounds!\n Bloodhounds!\n\n ROLF\n [_At the window._]\n By Odin, see, yonder the dogs\n Of Ingimund; he hath them in the leash;\n Behind him, on a litter, they are bringing\n Arfi, the dwarf.\n\n EGIL\n Yorul! Keep back the hounds!\n Mercy! Thou art no kin of theirs. They have\n No feud of blood with thee. Keep back the hounds!\n Mercy!\n\n ERIC\n [_Aside to men._]\n Still madder!\n\n ROLF\n They are twoscore men,\n And we a handful; shall we fight?\n\n EGIL\n Fight, madmen?\n Have ye not heard the hounds? Keep back the hounds.\n Go forth and bind their leashes to the trees.\n Bind them, and guard them, every slave of you!\n Go! Go!\n\n ROLF\n What! fear their dogs?\n\n ERIC\n Yorul, his eyes\u2014\n They burn!\n\n YORUL\n Be patient, master!\n\n EGIL\n Treachery!\n You\u2019ve lured \u2019em on. They come to dig it out;\n They smell the wounds. Ye have betrayed me.\n\n YORUL\n Men,\n Come forth and let us bind the hounds.\n\n EGIL\n [_Swinging his whip._]\n Slaves! cowards!\n Traitors! the lash shall teach you.\n [_Striking Rolf._]\n Bind the hounds!\n\n ROLF\n This goes too far.\n\n YORUL\n [_Imploring._]\n Come!\n\n EGIL\n Mercy! Ah! their fangs!\n Their fangs! Devils, go forth and bind the hounds.\n [_Follows the men, lashing them._]\n\n ERIC\n By Loki!\n\n YORUL\n [_Aside._]\n Humour him.\n\n [_The men go forth, whipped wildly by_ EGIL,\n _who sinks exhausted by the closed door_.]\n\n EGIL\n Keep back the hounds\u2014\n Their fangs!\n\n YORUL\n [_Outside._]\n Fear nothing; we will bind them.\n\n FRIDA\n [_Starts for the door._]\n Yorul!\n\n [EGIL, _rolling in her way, gazes at her,\n and rises, panting; she draws back_.]\n\n EGIL\n Thou art the maid of Yorul.\n\n FRIDA\n I am his.\n\n EGIL\n Who hid the wolf\u2014he knows.\n\n FRIDA\n He knows.\n\n EGIL\n His maiden!\n Shalt make a fair revenge.\n\n FRIDA\n Ah! Save me, Yorul!\n [_She faints._]\n\n EGIL\n Yorul, a dear revenge!\n [_Lifting her in his arms, he bears her off, left._]\n A lair! a lair!\n\n [_A pause; sunset glows through the window; the outer\n door is partly opened by Rolf, who calls in._]\n\n ROLF\n O Egil! Ingimund demands to enter\n And rest here for the night. Thy brother\u2019s wound\n Grows worse; they doubt his life. Shall we resist them,\n Or welcome? They are armed.\u2014Egil!\u2014Not here?\n\n [_Exit, closing the door. Another pause; the room\n grows dimmer; Egil slowly re\u00ebnters, left._]\n\n EGIL\n Now will I sleep.\u2014The time is strangely sweet,\n Blank, and untroubled. Soon it will be starlight.\n My limbs are filled with peace, mine ears with sounds\n Of brooks and breezy leafage murmurous,\n Mine eyes with slumber. Well, I will lie down\n And sleep.\n\n [_As Egil goes to the hearth, enter_ INGIMUND,\n THORDIS, WULDOR, _and a number\n of Arfi\u2019s men, carrying a litter, on which lies_\n ARFI; _these accompanied by Yorul, Rolf, Eric,\n and Egil\u2019s men_.]\n\n INGIMUND\n Slow; bear him softly, Wuldor. Let\n The others stay without, and place our men\n Most carefully on guard. For this one night,\n Yorul, thy master\u2019s bann shall be suspended.\n The need is great.\n\n THORDIS\n [_By the litter._]\n Father, he hath grown paler.\n\n INGIMUND\n Here set him down.\n\n EGIL\n [_Gazing at Thordis._]\n Dreaming!\n\n THORDIS\n Gently! his side.\n\n WULDOR\n Lady, what more to do?\n\n ARFI\u2019S MEN\n [_Some kneel, some kiss her robe; all give to her their\n eyes and hearts unconsciously._]\n What more?\n\n THORDIS\n Bring water.\n\n YORUL\n [_Aside._]\n Master, the hounds are tethered. Where is Frida?\n\n EGIL\n Dreaming! still dreaming!\n\n YORUL\n Frida?\n\n EGIL\n Wake me not.\n\n THORDIS\n Arfi! O gentle earl, look up! Let not\n Your ears be as the turf to our great sorrow.\n Arfi! I love you; live!\n\n YORUL\n [_To Rolf._]\n Hast thou seen Frida?\n\n ROLF\n No.\n [_Exit Yorul, left; Egil approaches Arfi\u2019s litter._]\n\n EGIL\n Will he die?\n\n INGIMUND\n The virus of the wolf\n Corrupts his blood; yet he may live.\n\n EGIL\n May live.\n\n WULDOR\n O God! I could take heart to bear this woe\n But that the damn\u00e8d beast that bit my master\n Still breathes.\n\n INGIMUND\n I wounded him.\n\n WULDOR\n Yet he escaped us.\n\n ROLF\n You, Wuldor, but not us. The wolf is dead;\n Behold his skin!\n [_Re\u00ebnter Yorul. He staggers forward._]\n\n INGIMUND\n Who killed him?\n\n ERIC\n Egil\u2019s man\n Yorul.\n\n INGIMUND\n Hail, Yorul! This deed shall atone\n For much of thy defiance and thy master\u2019s.\n Well done!\n\n YORUL\n [_Wildly._]\n A lie! a lie! the wolf still lives.\n\n ALL\n Lives?\n\n YORUL\n There!\n\n EGIL\n [_Crouching back._]\n Ai! anarch!\n\n YORUL\n [_Grappling Egil, tears off his bandages._]\n Look! Look, Ingimund!\n The wounds: you struck them with your hunting-spear.\n\n INGIMUND\n\n Forehead and thigh!\n\n YORUL\n He sprang on Arfi\u2019s horse,\n And bit his brother\u2019s throat\u2014his murderer.\n There lies his changeling skin. He buried it\n Here in the ashes.\n\n THE MEN\n [_Falling away._]\n Werewolf! Werewolf!\n\n INGIMUND\n Earl,\n Thou art accused of sin unnameable.\n Speak: art thou guilty?\n\n EGIL\n [_Glares about him in fear and rage._]\n Ai! Ai! anarch!\n\n INGIMUND\n Demon!\n\n YORUL\n Ah, Frida! Master\u2014Frida!\n\n ROLF\n What of her?\n Not dead?\n\n YORUL\n No, no; would God she were, and I!\n Frida!\n [_Exit, left._]\n\n INGIMUND\n Destroy the wolf.\n\n THORDIS\n [_To Wuldor, who is about to attack Egil with a spear._]\n Stop, earl! Your master;\n He has heard all.\n\n ARFI\n [_Raises his body painfully on the litter._]\n My brother\u2014Egil\u2014spare him.\n\n WULDOR\n But \u2019tis a werewolf!\n\n INGIMUND\n He has sought your life.\n\n ARFI\n The life he sought to take I give to him.\n My strength is little; if you love me, spare him.\n\n WULDOR\n \u2019Tis madness!\n\n THORDIS\n Nay, \u2019tis mercy, but to you\n Reason is vengeance. Father, look; he sinks\n Again. Will you deny the prayer of him\u2014\n [_Lowering her voice._]\n Perchance who dies.\n\n ARFI\n [_Faintly._]\n Egil!\n\n INGIMUND\n Egil shall live;\n So much I grant thee, Arfi, but no more.\n Henceforth thy brother shall be cast in chains,\n Until the demon-beast that plagues his body\n Is exorcised and tamed.\u2014Lay on the chains.\n\n [_As the men approach with fetters, Egil seizes a chain from\n one, and, springing fearfully to Thordis\u2019s side, there\n crouches and lifts it to her._]\n\n EGIL\n Not those\u2014but thou!\n\n [_Thordis puts the chain upon Egil._]\n\n\n\n\nACT II\n\n\nSCENE I: A prison chamber, dim, built of stone\n\n _On the right stands a high, framed tapestry, the design\n partly worked; beside it, on a table, several harps and\n instruments of music. On the left, extending centre,\n the half-completed model of a structure resembling the\n temple in Act I, Scene I; beside it, wooden blocks and\n miniature beams; in front of it a stone tablet, upon\n which_ EGIL\u2014_stooped, with an instrument in\n his hand\u2014is laboriously carving runes. Behind him\n stands_ ARFI, _at times guiding the hand of his\n brother, who is evidently being overcome by weariness,\n against which he struggles for concentration. Finally\n Egil\u2019s head droops, his hand falls, and his body sinks\n prone. At the door,_ THORDIS _enters._\n\n THORDIS\n Asleep?\n\n ARFI\n Quite, quite outworn.\n\n THORDIS\n The task is done?\n The runes?\n\n ARFI\n He has mastered them.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Sighs unconsciously._]\n How swift he learns!\n\n ARFI\n Yes, hourly he hath grown through the strange months\n Since Ingimund entrusted him to us\n To dispossess the beast that plagues him.\n\n THORDIS\n Look\n Now where he lies and dreams.\n\n ARFI\n There lies a block\n Of chaos, for our wills to fuse and kindle\n Into a world, glowing with vital forms\n Of law and loveliness. Yea, Thordis, we\u2014\n We are his being\u2019s seasons, you and I;\n The sun and moon, the starshine and the dew,\n Of this stark heath and breeding moor of passion,\n And the large jurisdiction of our love\n Must ripen there the temperate growths of reason,\n And stablish the mind\u2019s palaces.\n\n THORDIS\n You speak\n In sadness.\n\n ARFI\n Nay, in awe. The thought grows vast\n And awful.\n\n THORDIS\n So? I do not feel it, I!\n I feel as elemental as the air,\n That holds secure within its crystal veins\n As many thousand summers and their blooms\n As the earth may yearn for.\n\n ARFI\n \u2019Tis because you are\n Bounteous as the air, that from your presence all\n Take breath and power. Since you elected me\n Beside the altar stone, even I, that was\n A warped and ailing mannikin of woe,\n Prickling with sensibilities and pangs,\n Have felt myself exalted and at peace\n With this poor twisted mask of torse and limb,\n So simple it seems, so sane, so actual,\n That what I am was your immortal friend\n Elsewhere.\n\n THORDIS\n And have you felt the same? We two\n Have walked eternal mountains hand in hand,\n And watched the morning of our little lives\n Break over our birth-hour, and we shall stand\n Together at the sundown, and behold\n The passion clouds of death grow pale.\n\n ARFI\n And then\n We shall pass on together.\n\n [_In his sleep, Egil moans._]\n\n THORDIS\n We forget;\n We must not leave _him_ as we found him, love.\n\n ARFI\n The wolf torments him still in sleep.\n\n THORDIS\n Poor dreamer!\n And have you told him yet we are to wed\n To-morrow?\n\n ARFI\n No; I dreaded to rouse up\n The old, jealous hate; for since my wound has healed,\n He seems to have forgotten that old feud,\n And looks on you and me no more, methinks,\n As keepers of his prison-house, but rather\n As his accomplices, that smuggle in\n Subtle devices for his liberation,\n To comprehend the use of which he expends\n All of his time and powers.\n\n THORDIS\n Accomplices:\n It may be so; for he, that used to hang\n With looks of fire upon my merest motion,\n Will gaze beyond me now with eyes that gloat\n Blank as a miser\u2019s on some buried hoard.\n\n ARFI\n The gold he hoards is knowledge, and \u2019tis well,\n For that preoccupation may assuage\n The pain he else might feel, when he shall learn\n Our joy to-morrow.\n\n [_Egil cries out again._]\n\n THORDIS\n Yearning heart! how deep\n It labours still in pain! Let us take care\n To acquaint him gently with our happiness.\n We must divert him.\u2014Why, what\u2019s here?\n\n ARFI\n [_Smiling._]\n A temple;\n We\u2019re architects.\n\n THORDIS\n He helped you build it?\n\n ARFI\n I\n Am helping him.\n\n THORDIS\n But how shall this avail\n To tame the wolf?\n\n ARFI\n His genius is destruction;\n His breath and bondage\u2014to annihilate;\n And therefore Egil must be shown to build\n And not destroy; of mean, chaotic things\u2014\n These blocks\u2014to make admired harmony,\n And shape, however rude, some tangible\n Earnest of his constructive will.\n\n THORDIS\n I see;\n Who would have thought of it but you? Not I!\n [_Egil moans._]\n Hark!\n\n EGIL\n [_Low, in his sleep._]\n Freyja!\n\n THORDIS\n Did he call?\n\n EGIL\n Freyja!\n\n THORDIS\n That name!\n You heard?\n\n ARFI\n The goddess Spring\u2019s.\n\n THORDIS\n You taught him, then,\n To pray?\n\n ARFI\n Not I.\n\n EGIL\n [_Starting to his feet._]\n Freyja!\n\n THORDIS\n Can this be Egil?\n\n EGIL\n [_Crouched, pacing to and fro._]\n Free me, Freyja! Frore am I, frost-bit;\n Go we together into greenwood glad!\n Mirk under moon-mist mad will meet thee,\n Hunt thee from hiding, thy heart-beats hear.\n\n ARFI\n It is the wolf that wakes, while Egil slumbers.\n\n EGIL\n [_Looking, with closed eyes, as toward a height._]\n Free me, Freyja! Fair art thou, froward;\n Go we together into greenwood glad!\n Burns thine eyebeam bright as the bitch-wolf\u2019s;\n Longeth Fenris in thy lair to lie.\n\n THORDIS\n What other name spake he?\n\n ARFI\n I could not hear.\n\n EGIL\n [_In sudden terror, seeking to fly._]\n Ai! anarch! anarch! Ulfr!\n\n THORDIS\n Wake him.\n\n ARFI\n Wait;\n What this reveals to us may prove of help\n To him.\n\n EGIL\n [_Defiantly._]\n Oathless am I!\n\n THORDIS\n But see! he suffers.\n\n EGIL\n I\u2014I am Allfather!\n [_Swaying with anguish, as under the blows of a scourge, he\n sinks upon the floor, overwhelmed and quivering._]\n Oathless\u2014am\u2014I\u2014\n\n THORDIS\n Egil, awake! awake! \u2019Tis nothing.\n\n EGIL\n [_Gradually waking, rises to his knees._]\n Freyja!\n\n THORDIS\n No goddess I, poor Egil, but your friend\n Thordis, the maiden.\n\n EGIL\n She thou art\u2014the same\n Even now that saved me. [_Starting._] What is that?\n\n ARFI\n Your brother.\n\n EGIL\n My brother he is tall and beautiful,\n Happy and glorious, and I hate him for\u2019t.\n\n ARFI\n Nay, you have hated me, but not for that.\n Look on me, Egil.\n\n EGIL\n Arfi!\n\n THORDIS\n \u2019Twas a dream.\n\n EGIL\n What\u2019s that\u2014a dream? Is it a mist that steals\n Between the eyelids, filling them with shap\n Begot of its own vapour,\u2014shadows? lies?\n If so, which shapes are dreams\u2014your forms, or those,\n Those even now that beheld me, where I crouched\n Among the crater\u2019s hoar crusts, numb with cold,\n Yet writhing in the brassy flames, that eat\n And crawled into my vitals? Mine? No, no!\n That was not I, that nameless thing, not I!\n Say \u201cNo.\u201d\n\n ARFI\n It was the wolf. You fell asleep,\n Wearied, and dreamed of him.\n\n EGIL\n If that be sleep,\n Then let me sleep no more. O friends, sweet friends,\n You that have weaned and reared me from this thing,\n Promise I nevermore may droop mine eyes\n But you will prod them open.\n\n THORDIS\n You forget\n How you have grown. Soon you will be once more\u2014\n But oh! how milder, mightier, than before\u2014\n Egil, the hunter.\n\n EGIL\n Till then, Egil the hunted!\n O Thordis, could I meet\u2014as many a time\n I\u2019ve met within the forest, face to face,\n My quarry, and destroyed it\u2014could I so\n Confront this inward beast and grapple him\n To the death-struggle,\u2014ha! but with a dream!\n A spectral wolf, that lurks ever in the dusk\n And tangled thickets of my brain and will,\n A wraith invulnerable, that makes his lair\n In my bosom, that, when I would strike,\n I lacerate myself, draw life\u2014myself\n The beast, the bait, the hunter and the hunted!\n\n THORDIS\n Nay, you are still the hunter, he the quarry,\n Only to track him hath grown harder, for\n He hath grown duskier as your mind hath dawned,\n And can no more take shape, as he was wont,\n In tangible horror to the eyes of all.\n Yet we will track him\u2014you and I.\n\n EGIL\n But how?\n\n THORDIS\n With flaming torches we will set ablaze\n His ancient wilderness, till through the gap\n Of sundering boughs the quiet stars shall mock him,\n Naked and overwhelmed.\n\n EGIL\n But where? What boughs?\n What fire?\n\n THORDIS\n [_Taking up, among the instruments, a reed-pipe._]\n The way is wild; this pipe shall lead us.\n Play, Arfi!\n\n [_Sitting beside the block temple, Arfi begins to play upon the\n reed._]\n\n EGIL\n But this pipe\u2014\n\n THORDIS\n Do you not hear\n Her voice alluring us? It is a wood-sprite,\n The elf-child Harmony.\n\n EGIL\n Where can she lead us?\n This is a prison.\n\n THORDIS\n\n She can lead us forth\n Into the beauteous world. Hark! even now\u2014\n Do you not see?\u2014the walls are crumbling, bright\n With ivy-dew and morning.\u2014Don\u2019t you hear?\n The birds! the birds!\u2014Now, Egil, now your hand!\n Now on the dance with me! We\u2019ll follow her\n On\u2014to the chase!\n\n [_Taking hands, they dance whilst Arfi blows the mellow\n pipe. Eager, impetuous, Egil becomes kindled by the\n sound and motion till, in the midst, dropping Thordis\u2019s\n hand, he gropes toward the wall._]\n\n EGIL\n The chase! the chase! the chase!\n Ho, torches for the chase!\n\n ARFI\n [_Stops playing, and rises._]\n A metaphor\n Transforms him.\n\n EGIL\n Torches!\n [_Stumbling against the blocks._]\n What is this?\n\n ARFI\n Our temple;\n We\u2019ve left it uncompleted.\n\n EGIL\n This!\u2014the chase!\n To sit block-building like a little child?\n To ask vague questions that await strange answers?\n No! do not mock me! Summon the great hunt.\n Hand me a torch into my gripping palm,\n Point where to leap, and let the whirlwinds sing\n And the great jungles crash in conflagration.\n The wolf! reveal the wolf! that I may rend\n The demon limb from limb.\n\n ARFI\n He rages blind\n Now in your eyes.\n\n EGIL\n [_Controlling himself, shudders._]\n Emancipate me!\n\n ARFI\n Come;\n Here let us sit, as we were boys again,\n And pile our blocks.\n\n THORDIS\n Go, Egil! Build with him.\n The forest-sprite has led you to her temple.\n\n [_Going to the tapestry frame, while Egil joins Arfi, she\n begins to work upon the embroidery, observing from time\n to time their block-building._]\n\n EGIL\n A temple! Still they mock me.\u2014\u2019Tis a toy.\n\n ARFI\n Why, true, a toy, and yet a temple, if\n The mind bring incense here, and the bow\u2019d heart\n Make sacrifice.\n\n EGIL\n We are not pigmies, we,\n To creep under this gable.\n\n ARFI\n Are we not?\n Are we so great? Who hath not stood beneath\n A sparrow\u2019s egg-shell, speckled o\u2019er with stars,\n And dwindled there with wonder? Who so small\n But hath, to quench desire, drunk of the sun\n Or set his parch\u2019d lips to the moon\u2019s pale rim?\n So great, so small, neither and both, our stature\n Waxes and wanes, inconstant as a shadow\n \u2019Twixt night and noon and night. This temple, lad,\n Will be as cramped or spacious as the spirit\n Which consecrates it.\n\n EGIL\n Dark! Thou speakest darkness.\n\n ARFI\n Listen! This house of toy-wood is the altar\n Where you must supplicate the immortal gods\n For freedom.\n\n EGIL\n So; the immortal gods! What, then,\n Are they that I should sue to them for freedom?\n\n ARFI\n They are the powers of the inevitable\n To whom we mortals must submit our wills\n Or perish.\n [_Egil\u2019s structure falls._]\n\n EGIL\n Ah! it breaks. What made it fall?\n\n ARFI\n A god: the same that holds these prison walls\n Stone upon stone; the same that mortises\n The rock-seams of the solid hills, and hangs\n Aloft the glittering roof-tree of the world.\u2014\n You builded weak, and the god chided you.\n\n EGIL\n Are then the gods so near?\n\n ARFI\n In all our acts\n We feel the might of their invisible hands,\n But only in prayer behold them face to face.\n\n EGIL\n In prayer?\n\n ARFI\n The abnegation of our wills\n For theirs, the affirmation of their laws,\n Which to the god\u2019s \u201cThou must\u201d answers \u201cI will.\u201d\n\n EGIL\n And that is freedom?\n\n ARFI\n That alone is freedom.\n\n EGIL\n I will be free then, Arfi. Why, \u2019tis simpler\n Than playing with these blocks. I will be free!\n Teach me to pray.\n\n ARFI\n I cannot.\n\n EGIL\n Teach me, Thordis.\n [_She shakes her head and smiles_.]\n Alas! who will?\n\n ARFI\n Yourself alone.\n\n EGIL\n But how?\n How may I know when I have learned to pray?\n\n ARFI\n When, in the full sight of your goal of yearning,\n Your spirit, pausing, cries out to the gods\u2014\n \u201cThis is my heart\u2019s desire\u2014take it\u2014\u2019tis yours!\u201d\n That instant of renunciation will\n Be prayer and freedom both and the wolf\u2019s passing-bell.\n [_Enter_ WULDOR; _he goes to Arfi and speaks aside._]\n Admit him.\n\n WULDOR\n But\u2014\n\n ARFI\n Why not?\n\n WULDOR\n His looks are wild,\n His words were bitter. When he spoke of thee,\n He laughed and scowled.\n\n ARFI\n Say we will come to him.\n [_Exit Wuldor_.]\n\n THORDIS\n [_Whom Arfi approaches, with a warning gesture._]\n Who is it?\n\n ARFI\n [_Aside._]\n Yorul; he has asked to speak\n With Egil.\n\n THORDIS\n Ought we to admit him?\n\n ARFI\n It is wise,\n For so may Egil measure what he is\n By what he was. Look; he has knelt to pray.\n The time is fitting; we will leave him so.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Leaving the tapestry._]\n How noble he looks! Shall we not tell him now\n About to-morrow?\n\n ARFI\n We will tell him all\n When he has prayed.\n [_Exeunt._]\n\n EGIL\n [_Solus._]\n To pray\u2014to pray is simple:\n \u201cThis is my heart\u2019s desire\u2014take it\u2014\u2019tis yours!\u201d\n And so\u2014emancipation. O you gods,\n If through these prison walls you may behold\n The mock rites of this childish temple, hear me!\n Knowledge\u2014knowledge, that is my heart\u2019s desire.\n That is the soul-inebriating cup\n Which hath transformed me half unto your image\n And still hath drugg\u2019d the other brutish half\n To lethargy and dreams. To know, to learn,\n And evermore to learn! To watch new worlds\n Kindling from out the dark of consciousness,\n Fresh firmaments gathering from drop to drop\n Of common morning dew; to be upborne\n On the light-trailing wings of understanding\n And scan far off the former crawling-place\n And wolf-haunt of the spirit, to spread those wings\n At one\u2019s own will and mount into the sun,\n Searing the mind with ecstasy\u2014you gods!\n That is my heart\u2019s desire: take it from me!\n Take it, \u2019tis yours, for it hath come from you,\n But when of that you have bereft me, leave\n Freedom instead, and innocence.\n [_Enter_ YORUL.]\n What\u2019s there?\n Speak.\n\n YORUL\n [_As Egil starts up, bows himself at his feet._]\n Thy betrayer.\n\n EGIL\n Oh, art thou a god?\n And art thou come in answer to my prayer?\n\n YORUL\n Master\u2014\n\n EGIL\n I know thy voice.\n\n YORUL\n [_Turning upward his face._]\n Destroy me.\n\n EGIL\n [_Dreamily._]\n Yorul!\n Yorul, my liegeman!\n\n YORUL\n Once thou named me so;\n Once and the world was sweet\u2014once and \u2019twas\n sweet.\n\n EGIL\n Why have they sent thee, Yorul?\n\n YORUL\n Who, my lord?\n\n EGIL\n Thou art their messenger; be swift; declare\n Their grace, or doom.\u2014Shall I go free?\n\n YORUL\n Destroy me\n With blows of steel, not of remorse. None sent me.\n Myself hath driven me here, here to the cell\n Wherein my treachery consigned my master.\n Hear me!\n\n EGIL\n I hear thee, Yorul.\n\n YORUL\n Since that night,\n That bitter sunset when she\u2014since that night\n Till now, I have not left the forest, nor\n Spoken with friend or foe; but I have stopped\n My heart in the deep silentness of trees\n Till it hath burst for pain. My wrong and thine,\n Thy wrong and mine\u2014I dared to balance them,\n To let my woe condone my treachery\n And prove it justified, as if my heart\n Were not itself thy vassal, and its pangs\n Feudal to thy desires. And so I sinned\n Until to-day.\n\n EGIL\n These are enigmas. Speak!\n How have the gods made answer to my prayer?\n\n YORUL\n To-day I met with peasants in the wood\n Who drove their herds of swine all garlanded\n With green arbutus. Hailing me, they cried,\n \u201cWhy come ye not with us to Odin\u2019s stone\n Against to-morrow\u2019s wedding-day?\u201d \u201cWho weds?\u201d\n Quoth I. \u201cOur priestess Thordis weds the dwarf;\n Come with us!\u201d Then I bit my arm and vowed\n That I would come to thee and speak my shame,\n And say, \u201cDestroy me, lord, or let me serve thee.\u201d\n\n EGIL\n Peasants they were; they said\u2014what was\u2019t they said?\n\n YORUL\n \u201cTo-morrow our priestess Thordis\u201d\u2014\n\n EGIL\n \u201c_Weds the dwarf!_\u201d\n Those were thy words; thou shalt not change them now.\n\n YORUL\n I would not change them.\n\n EGIL\n Wouldst thou not? Well said!\n \u201cTo-morrow the maiden Thordis\u201d\u2014nay, not so;\n \u201cTo-morrow our priestess Thordis\u2014_weds the dwarf_.\u201d\n And all their swine were garlanded.\u2014Was it so?\n\n YORUL\n Even so, and I\u2014\n\n EGIL\n Even so!\n\n YORUL\n I vowed to come\u2014\n\n EGIL\n [_Laughing._]\n Knowledge\u2014knowledge\u2014that was my heart\u2019s desire!\n\n YORUL\n And make confession\u2014\n\n EGIL\n Why, here have I sat\n And licked the crumbs of knowledge from his hand\n As I had been his beagle; and for what?\n To grow! to be transmuted from a wolf\n Into my brother\u2019s ape! To evolve a mind\n That knows at last the rapture it must lose.\n Oh, noble!\n\n YORUL\n And make confession of my crime\n As of my love.\n\n EGIL\n [_Beginning to pace back and forth._]\n Ha!\n\n YORUL\n For I loved her well,\n More than I dreamed. Love leads us from the truth\n And blinds us to ourselves.\n\n EGIL\n Ah!\n\n YORUL\n So when I\n Beheld that deed\u2014forgive me!\n\n EGIL\n Ah!\n\n YORUL\n I spake\n Those traitor\u2019s words that damned thee to this cell;\n For I was mad. O God! the memory\n Maddens me now.\n\n EGIL\n Ha!\n\n YORUL\n Look not on me so,\n For I am weak and passionate. Take care!\n The truth deserts me!\u2014Nay, forgive me, master,\n \u2019Tis love is falsehood.\n\n EGIL\n Ah!\n\n YORUL\n I am thy liegeman,\n And what was mine was thine to take, unquestioned.\n\n EGIL\n Ah!\n\n YORUL\n Yet my soul _would_ question, and I claimed her\n In spite of thee, for that same night\u2014\n [_Draws nearer and whispers._]\n I killed her.\n Mine! She is mine! Thou canst not touch her now.\n She lies out yonder with the virgin stars\n White and inviolable. Dead, she is mine\n Whom, living, \u2019twas thy title not to spare.\n Master, pity my triumph! Leave me yet\n This foible of my arrogance, for which\n Henceforth I am thy loyal slave, to do\n Or die for thee.\n\n EGIL\n Wouldst serve me\u2014ah?\n\n YORUL\n Say how!\n\n EGIL\n Seems thou canst kill.\n\n YORUL\n Speak but that word.\n\n [_They look long at each other._]\n\n EGIL\n \u2019Tis spoken.\n Go!\u2014Stay!\n\n YORUL\n What more?\n\n EGIL\n Thine oath!\u2014for sometimes, Yorul,\n The resolute grow sick with afterthought,\n And hot will cool\u2014thine oath, to shun my sight,\n To speak not nor be spoken with, until\n \u2019Tis done.\n\n YORUL\n [_Raising his right arm._]\n By Frida\u2019s cold and virgin hand,\n To shun my master\u2019s sight, to speak not, nor\n Be spoken with, until \u2019tis done.\n\n EGIL\n \u2019Tis sworn;\n Go now.\n [_Yorul covers his face, and exit._]\n To-morrow she shall wed\u2014not him.\n O dupe of lovers! Bond-slave to a dwarf!\n O gods, your fool! your fool!\n\n [_Throwing himself down beside the temple of blocks, he\n destroys it, insensate, and crouches, laughing, amid\n the ruins._]\n\n\nSCENE II\n\n [_The curtain rises presently upon the same: a taper burns\n low_. THORDIS, _seated with a harp, is playing;\n near her_ EGIL _stands amid the block ruins.\n Ceasing to play, Thordis rises, looks at Egil (who\n stands oblivious), passes silently to the window and\n looks out._]\n\n THORDIS\n The moon has set.\n\n EGIL\n [_Stirs as from a trance._]\n Can, then, the eternal cease?\n That perfect architecture pale in air?\n You built again my temple of sweet sounds\n And peopled it with deathless visitants,\n And shed around their forms a nameless grace\n Medicinal as moonlight, and as calm.\n I walked with them, and they discoursed with me.\n Almost it seemed myself was one of them.\u2014\n And then you ceased.\n\n THORDIS\n \u2019Tis beauty\u2019s paradox\n To prove itself immortal\u2014and to die.\n\n EGIL\n Die? Must this godlike transmutation lapse\n Into the lurking wolf again? Ah, no!\n That music died in labour, and its yearning\n Hath borne a man-child, that lives after it\n Here in my soul. Henceforth I nevermore\n May be that groping hypocrite of prayer\n Whom you uplifted from this ruined altar,\n With passion-seal\u00e8d eyes seeking the light\n Of freedom. No, henceforth I shall be strong,\n Clear-eyed, serene, and dauntless. See! I take\n Your hand and bid you go from me.\u2014Thou only,\n Thou art my heart\u2019s desire. See! I renounce thee.\n Go from me, for I love you. Leave me! Yet\n You leave me not alone; that passionate presence\n Which the blind wrath and hunger for possession\n Cries out for from my clay\u2014of that I am\n Bereft indeed; but losing that, I gain\n The stellar part of you, the exceeding light\n Of fellowship and human sympathy.\u2014\n Leave me! I love you.\n\n THORDIS\n Is this Egil speaks?\n\n EGIL\n Egil, your lover, I!\n\n THORDIS\n The gods are mighty,\n And music is the lordliest. O Egil,\n Thou art emancipated, and to-morrow\n They will fling wide thy prison doors.\u2014Good night!\n [_Giving him the harp._]\n Keep here thy god with thee.\n [_At the door, as they clasp hands._]\n Brother!\u2014Good night.\n\n [_Exit._]\n\n EGIL\n Sister!\u2014Emancipated! Mine at last\n Freedom and innocence! The occult beast\n That crouched beside the sweet wells of my spirit\n Is exorcised at last.\u2014To-morrow dawn\n I shall go forth and taste the wild, spring air,\n And gather the hamlet children in the woods\n To pluck arbutus for her wedding-day,\n Her wedding-day\u2014and his. I have renounced her.\n Emancipated\u2014but I have renounced her\n Even for that, for freedom. What were freedom\n Without\u2014his! his! forever his own! And I\n Am happy, rapt, triumphant? _His!_ What power\n Hath wrought in me this ignominy?\n [_Lifting the harp._]\n Thou!\n Wast thou, imperious instrument! Wast thou,\n Delirious god!\n [_Fiercely he plucks out several strings._]\n Thou hast decoyed me!\n [_Pausing._]\n Still,\n There\u2019s Yorul; Yorul\u2019s true.\n\n [_Wrenching with both hands the harp\u2019s frame, he breaks it\n in halves, and exultant, raises them above his head,\n with a great breath._]\n\n Emancipated!\n\n\n\n\nACT III\n\n\nSCENE: A forest glade\n\n _On the left, a green bank and a pool, back of which is a\n thicket; on the right, a vista, beneath boughs, of a\n distant volcano, rising through the wet light of dawn._\n\n EGIL\u2019S VOICE\n [_Outside._]\n Help\u2014O! help\u2014O!\n\n SHRILL VOICES\n [_Outside._]\n A troll! a troll! a troll!\n\n [_Enter, right_, EGIL, _running. He is completely\n surrounded and swarmed over by little children in bright\n spring garb. One little girl has climbed upon his\n shoulder, where she clings._]\n\n THE CHILDREN\n Heigh! hold him fast. Troll! troll!\n\n EGIL\n Help, gentle greenwood!\n Am I but now escaped men\u2019s prison walls\n To fall into this ambush of thine elves!\n Save me, you wrens and warblers! Fetch me wings!\n\n THE CHILDREN\n [_Taking hands, dance about him, singing._]\n Thrice, thrice,\n Thrice around thee!\n Star-wise\n Our steps surround thee;\n Now yield thee, yield thee, proud Sir Troll!\n Body and soul\n Our spells have bound thee.\n\n EGIL\n Thrice, thrice,\n Thrice around me!\n Star-wise\n Your steps surround me.\n Now yield I me and pay my toll\u2014\n Body and soul\n As ye have bound me.\n [_He lies down, pretending death; each child places his foot\n upon him, with a shout. At this he springs up, laughing,\n seizes a little boy and girl, and, seating himself on a\n log, places them on his knees. The others cluster about\n him._]\n Ha, sirrah! is this maid thy sister?\n\n THE LITTLE BOY\n Yes,\n She\u2019s mine.\n\n EGIL\n What wouldst thou do if I should steal her?\n\n THE LITTLE BOY\n I\u2019d kill you.\n\n EGIL\n Ha! wouldst let him?\n\n THE LITTLE GIRL\n Oh, of course;\n He is my brother.\n\n EGIL\n \u2019Tis a brother\u2019s right\n To kill, I see.\n\n THE LITTLE GIRL\n In play, you know.\n\n EGIL\n In play.\n\n THE CHILDREN\n Come play! Come play!\n\n EGIL\n What now?\n\n THE CHILDREN\n [_Severally._]\n Fox and wild geese!\n Glass-mountain, Spinning-fairy, Cat-skin, Crows,\n Frog-bridegroom!\n\n THE LITTLE GIRL\n _I_ know what!\n\n EGIL\n [_Takes both her hands, smiling._]\n Well, what?\n\n THE LITTLE GIRL\n I\u2019ll be\n Red Riding-hood, and you shall be the wolf.\n\n [_Egil drops her hands and rises._]\n\n THE LITTLE BOY\n I\u2019m the good hunter and these are my men.\n\n EGIL\n [_Vassal-like to the little boy._]\n Beseech you, sir, may I not play your part?\n I\u2019d fain be the good hunter.\n\n THE LITTLE BOY\n Granted, earl.\n I\u2019d fainer be the wolf.\n [_To the children._]\n Come! gather your flowers.\n\n EGIL\n And when you\u2019ve filled your laps and aprons up\n With wind-flowers and arbutus, bring them here.\n Mind! \u2019tis our lady Thordis\u2019 wedding-day.\n\n THE CHILDREN\n [_Running from the little boy._]\n The wolf! the wolf!\n\n [_Passing left into the wood, they are seen for some time\n gathering flowers and watching, in their game, the\n stealthy approachments of the little boy._]\n\n EGIL\n O freedom! happy world!\n Hark, how they laugh, with bubbling undersong\n Sweetening the over-choir of the birds.\n And I\u2014I, too, can laugh; can loose my soul\n Free-wing\u2019d into the open with a cry\n Unfetter\u2019d as a lark.\n\n [_Looking up into the tree-tops, he laughs again._]\n\n O rarest laughter!\n O medicine of the long-languish\u2019d mind!\n O welling of the heart\u2019s sweet waters up,\n Washing the acid tang of cynic woe\n Sere from the spirit\u2019s lips. O benison\n Of innocence! And have I lived before\n This hour? Is not this day creation\u2019s dawn?\n [_Flinging himself upon the bank._]\n These children, with their lifted flowerlike faces,\n These flowers, with their dewy childlike eyes,\n These parting vapours on the golden hills,\n Yea, all these leaves of little twinkling grass\n Whose roots strike down to tears of yesterday\u2014\n Now shine like things immaculate, new-born,\n And I, and they, like issue of one mother,\n The offspring of an universal birth.\n Oh, what exceeding power hath loveliness\n For her beholder!\n\n [_Where he lies thus rapt in the sylvan landscape, the\n first sunlight breaks through the wood, and by it the_\n SHADOW _of a man is thrown sharply, from the\n left, across the reclining form of Egil. At the same\n time, from the right, is heard Arfi\u2019s voice, singing._]\n\n THE VOICE OF ARFI\n Thy heart, love, give or take\n Or cast away;\n Mine shall not break\n Forever and a day;\n For lovers kiss their mates where thoughts are kind.\n Love lives within the mind\u2014the mind\u2014the mind.\n\n [_Slowly having risen to his feet, Egil perceives\n the human shadow and starts._]\n\n EGIL\n Yorul!\n [_The shadow recedes, left, from the scene._]\n Yorul, stay!\n Come back!\n\n THE VOICE OF ARFI\n The redstart and the rose,\n The clear sunrise,\n What mortal knows\n Their grace to immortalise?\n Seek them again, where Death can never find,\n By love, within the mind\u2014the enamour\u2019d mind.\n\n EGIL\n It must not be.\u2014Yorul!\u2014What, I\n Was mad, who now am sane and innocent.\n Come back! It shall not\u2014Yorul!\n\n THORDIS\n [_Calls outside._]\n Egil!\n\n EGIL\n [_Pausing._]\n She!\n\n [_Enter, right_, THORDIS _and_ ARFI.\n _They are dressed in white, the dwarf being quaintly\n garlanded. They are followed by_ WULDOR.\n _Thordis goes gaily toward Egil, extending both her\n hands._]\n\n THORDIS\n Deserter! runagate!\u2014Look, Arfi, here\u2019s\n Our truant brought to bay. And will not yield!\n And will not even surrender up his eyes\n To his imploring gaolers.\u2014O proud brother!\n Not even a hand-clasp in return for all\n Thy struck-off shackles?\n [_Taking her hands, he still looks off left._]\n\n EGIL\n Lady!\n\n THORDIS\n Still no eyes\n For mortals? Quite enamoured of a wood-sprite?\n Alas! we\u2019ve broke a tryst and she has flown!\n Call her: perchance she\u2019ll hear.\n\n EGIL\n [_Looking upon Thordis._]\n Lady!\u2014\n [_Quickly then turning away, speaks under his breath\n to Wuldor._]\n A word,\n A word!\n\n ARFI\n He\u2019s deeply moved.\n\n THORDIS\n He\u2019s deeply changed.\n Saw you his eyes when they turned full on me,\n And he said, \u201cLady\u201d? There were tears in them,\n Tears, and yet through them glowed the ancient fire,\n Not now in wrath, but tenderness.\n\n EGIL\n [_Aside to Wuldor._]\n Overtake him;\n The oath he swore to Egil\u2014tell him\u2014Egil\n Now countermands. Bid him do nothing; go!\n [_Watches Wuldor off, left. Arfi, quietly looking\n at him, speaks to Thordis._]\n\n ARFI\n You love him dearly?\n\n THORDIS\n Very dearly.\n\n EGIL\n Brother,\n Thordis, your hands again!\n\n ARFI\n [_Smiling._]\n Have you despatched\n Wuldor to find the lady wood-sprite?\n\n EGIL\n Friends,\n Were we less deeply known to one another,\n And chiefly I to you\u2014what thing I was,\n What now, perchance, am grown\u2014well, I suppose\n \u2019Twere custom, were it not? to wreathe our lips\n With honey-blossoms of superfluous\n Congratulation: you are to be wed,\n And I am free, and my emancipation\n Owes all itself to you.\u2014\u201cHeaven be with you!\u201d\n \u201cI thank you well,\u201d \u201cJoy is to me!\u201d\u2014But these\n Things being said, and rung with all the chimes\n Of truth, I beg of you let now these hands\n Speak the unsaid remainder for our hearts\n In silence.\n [_The three hold hands._]\n\n ARFI\n [_After a pause._]\n Vaster powers than we have wrought\n This friendship. Whom the gods join hand in hand\n Their fates thenceforth are mingled.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Loosening her hands with a laugh._]\n So, dear lord,\n Be merry!\n\n ARFI\n [_Speaks low, with a smile._]\n Have I not divinest reason?\n This is the place.\n\n THORDIS\n Arfi! The sacred pool?\n\n ARFI\n The pool of Freyja\u2014there! The wood-folk call it\n Her mirror, for they say that once i\u2019 the year,\n Ever at May-day, the fresh goddess comes\n To sit beside it with her elves, whilst they\n Comb her bright hair.\n\n THORDIS\n And then she peers within it?\n\n ARFI\n As you do now.\u2014Sweetest, good-bye!\n\n THORDIS\n Good-bye?\n But where are you going?\n\n ARFI\n The wood pathway to heaven.\n I\u2019m going to hasten that laggard priest, your father,\n To make him make you mine.\n\n EGIL\n Stop! You\u2019re alone.\n\n ARFI\n Well?\n\n EGIL\n [_Embarrassed._]\n Will it be now?\n\n ARFI\n Am I not written large\n With bridal runes? Hang not these garlands thick\n As invocations from an inn-house gable?\n \u201cHere light ye down, fair guests! Light down, light down,\n Dear lady, at the sign of the \u2018_Green Bridegroom_!\u2019\u201d\u2014\n Farewell, sweetheart. This day is clothed in green\n For joy. I will return with Ingimund\n As swift as longing.\n\n EGIL\n Stay; we must be wise.\n You must not leave me here alone with her.\n\n ARFI\n Why? Are you not my brother?\n\n EGIL\n I am he\n Who vowed against you hatred and revenge.\n\n ARFI\n Also you are my brother.\n\n EGIL\n I am he\n That with a brutish fang struck at your life.\n\n ARFI\n Good-bye, dear brother.\n\n EGIL\n Wait! Was I not then\n Your brother\u2014_then_? Will not a brother lust?\n A brother covet? Are not beauty, grace,\n Lures to a brother\u2019s eyes? Are brothers\u2019 souls\n By nature kin? Or is that name a spell\n To render heart and mind innocuous\n That else might murder, ravish? Oh, be not\n So rash as put your trust in me because\n I am your brother.\n\n ARFI\n [_Returning to Egil, embraces him._]\n Lad, keep this with you.\n I would not be so rash as _not_ to trust\n In you a power more august than yourself\n For all the joy and honour which this day\n Holds out to me.\u2014Adieu! This day is joy\u2019s.\n [_Exit, right._]\n\n EGIL\n Now we\u2019re alone. How is it with you\u2014sister?\n\n THORDIS\n Strangely, my brother; how is it with you?\n\n EGIL\n O God!\n How many waking dawns and desperate nights\n Have I, in sharp imagination, moaned\n For this sweet hour, to stand\u2014as now\n I stand\u2014alone with you, in liberty.\n\n THORDIS\n And now that time has come.\n [_She reaches to him her hand;\n he does not take it._]\n\n EGIL\n Now it is come,\n But ah! how sternly different is this truth\n From all I dreamed. Can this be freedom? See!\n What hangs upon these arms? They wear no chains.\n Why, then, do they not catch you breathless up\n And bear you hence in rapture? In your eyes\u2014\n Lo! veilless I behold your virgin soul!\n And yet she does not fly, nor I pursue.\n\n THORDIS\n What should she fear?\n\n EGIL\n What should she not?\u2014These eyes\n Renouncing hers; these hands that dare not press\n Her vesture\u2019s hem, lest they consume like coals\n That rob\u00e8d sanctuary; these desires\n That burn around her like the hedge of flames\n Round Brunhild\u2019s bower; this waiting dawn, this hush\n And solitary wood\u2014What fear? Herself,\n Herself that, all resolved to beauty, breathes\n Herself unto these eyes, these hands, this dawn,\n These leash\u2019d desires!\n\n THORDIS\n You love me, you would say.\n Why should you not?\n\n EGIL\n I have renounced you.\n\n THORDIS\n Me,\n But not your love for me. Surely that still\n Is happiness.\n\n EGIL\n Why, yes, I must be happy;\n For this is pain, and pain is very sweet\n To those who love; and this is bitter sweet\n To breathe the name of \u201csister\u201d \u2019gainst your cheek\n Where but so late the sigh of \u201csweetheart\u201d stole\n Warm from my brother\u2019s lips.\u2014O lure and vision!\n Do you not see? I have climbed up to you\n Out of the rank abyss; this is the verge:\n One word, one look, from you must hurl me back,\n Or save me.\n\n THORDIS\n Look.\n\n EGIL\n How have you dared to trust me?\n\n THORDIS\n When have we ever ceased to trust you?\n\n EGIL\n \u201cWe\u201d?\n\n THORDIS\n Arfi and I. Oh, he is very wise.\n His judgment is as gracious as a child\u2019s\n That in the wonderland of its own wisdom\n Imagines nothing baser than itself.\n\n EGIL\n But I _am_ baser.\n\n THORDIS\n Hath it proved so?\n\n EGIL\n [_After a pause._]\n No!\n No; thanks to you and him and my own pain,\n It shall not prove so. This at last is power\n And innocence; this\u2014this at last is freedom.\n Now when I clasp your hand I clasp his also\u2014\n My saviour\u2019s; now beneath your face, for shrine,\n I will confess my spirit to you both,\n For are you not my gods? You have created\n My heaven and hell, and builded my path heavenward.\n Now from your eyes nothing\u2014nothing within\n This heart shall be concealed.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Smiling._]\n What then is your secret?\n\n [_On the edge of the scene, left, unobserved by them,\n reappears the human_ SHADOW.]\n\n EGIL\n [_Slowly rises._]\n My secret?\n\n THORDIS\n Come, sit with me on this bank,\n And I will be a listening stream, a bird,\n An opening flower, to overhear you.\n\n [_He follows and sits beside her; the Shadow\n slowly moves toward them._]\n\n EGIL\n But\u2014\n\n THORDIS\n That thought which falters now behind your lips.\n\n EGIL\n I have no thought which hides from you.\n [_The Shadow moves between them. Egil starts\n up with a cry._]\n Again!\n Again it falls upon me!\n\n THORDIS\n What?\n\n EGIL\n \u2019Tis gone.\n\n THORDIS\n What\u2019s gone?\n\n EGIL\n It is no matter.\n\n THORDIS\n A surprise!\n I see: a wedding-day surprise for us.\n\n EGIL\n No, but a lie. I lied to you. Last night\n I told you I renounced you, but I lied.\n\n THORDIS\n Egil!\n\n EGIL\n It was the music, the harp-demon;\n It blinded and then tempted me; it lured me\n To obtain my freedom falsely. But to-day,\n This morning when my body fetterless\n Roamed in this wood-side, and the little children\n Climbed over me in laughter, and I too\n Laughed with them, and all nature laughed and echoed\n \u201cThou art emancipated!\u201d\u2014I was healed;\n Then I was healed and now all\u2019s well again;\n All\u2019s well; no harm shall come to him.\n\n THORDIS\n To whom?\n I do not understand.\n\n EGIL\n You have no need;\n I claim your own assurance. Will you trust me?\n\n THORDIS\n So well that, now you have put your secret by,\n I will tell mine.\n\n EGIL\n What secret can you have\n For me?\n\n THORDIS\n You have been wicked; so perhaps\n Have I.\n\n EGIL\n [_Smiling._]\n You!\n\n THORDIS\n [_Showing her hand._]\n Look! look there.\n\n EGIL\n A scar.\n\n THORDIS\n The mark\n Of fangs.\n\n EGIL\n What thing has dared to give you pain?\n\n THORDIS\n Have you forgot?\n\n EGIL\n Ah me! I had forgot.\n Cannot you, too, forget?\n\n THORDIS\n I would not; that\u2019s\n My secret. Yes, this scar is dear to me.\n\n EGIL\n That sign of blasphemy, of him\u2014the werewolf\u2014\n\n THORDIS\n Is dear to me.\n\n EGIL\n Thordis!\n\n THORDIS\n I loved the wolf.\n It was a life to nourish and protect,\n A being alien and mysterious,\n Yearning and captive. It was terrible,\n And yet so eager, swift, and passionate\n It fascinated me. It was ignoble,\n Cruel, yet infinite of promise; cunning,\n Malicious, yet beautifully animate,\n Sublimely animal.\n\n EGIL\n O pain!\n\n THORDIS\n To take it\n Into my bosom, foster its wild growth\n From hour to hour, to watch from day to day\n The fierce light of its eyes glow deeper, milder,\n To nestle it only to set it free\u2014these joys\n Were pangs to me.\n\n EGIL\n [_Low._]\n Have pity!\n\n THORDIS\n Then it was\n So lordly, so imperious of strength,\n In grace so sinuous, in pride so ardent\u2014\n Who had not been enamoured of it?\n\n EGIL\n Cease!\n It wrought some monstrous spell to make you wanton.\n\n THORDIS\n If that be wantonness which fain would take\n No joy of loving but the giving joy.\n\n EGIL\n But for that beast you turned your thoughts from Arfi?\n\n THORDIS\n You do not understand; Arfi and I\n Are one; it needs no murmured wedding vows\n To make us that. But I am beautiful,\n And all who look upon me love to press\n Nearer and touch my gown, and when I pass\n I feel the ruddy mantling of their cheeks\n And the wild admiration start; and these\n Are joys to Arfi as to me, and we\n Return their love.\n\n EGIL\n Even so you loved me?\n\n THORDIS\n No,\n More than all those, for you alone of those\n Had need of me.\u2014And so you have my secret.\n I fear indeed it is a wicked one;\n For I have been like a too-doting nurse\n That lets her heart hang backward in regret\n And whispers her loved one, \u201cGrow, but do not leave me!\u201d\n\n EGIL\n For what then have I grown, O gods?\n\n THORDIS\n For this:\n To be yourself, and free of that nurse-bondage.\n\n EGIL\n Free! but alone, adrift! Oh, take me back\n Into the bosom of your care. Once more\n Nestle me there, the wild thing!\n\n THORDIS\n That once more\n So you might struggle for your freedom? Nay,\n The wild thing now is dead.\n\n [_Enter Wuldor, left; he goes to Egil._]\n\n WULDOR\n I cannot speak\n With him. When I approached, he fled from me,\n Silent. I called, but both his hands he pressed\n Over his ears, and silently among\n The trees eluded me.\n\n EGIL\n [_Seizing Wuldor\u2019s wrists, speaks huskily._]\n I have not willed this;\n They cannot lay this crime on me\u2014these gods,\n For I have annulled it, I have cancelled it.\n Come here, look in my heart; is it not clean?\n Woe thou mayest see there, yearning, pain, but not\u2014\n Say, canst thou see there\u2014murder? Answer not,\n But go! What will come _will_ come; what have I\n To do with it? Go, go, I say.\n [_Exit Wuldor, right, looking darkly._]\n\n THORDIS\n You are ill,\n Your gestures\u2014they are wild.\n\n EGIL\n Why should they not be?\n The wild thing is not dead, but is exalted.\n Gods, why should we, your hinds, coin and devise\n Dreams of emancipation! We are quibblers\n And hypocrites, damned, every slave of us,\n To hug our chains in secret. Rather than\n Acknowledge what we are, the mind outwits\n The heart, the heart hoodwinks the mind, the tongue\n Cajoles and counterplots them both, while truth\u2014\n [_Breaks into laughter._]\n\n THORDIS\n Tell me the truth.\n\n EGIL\n Again? Another version?\n Why, listen then: I love you; not in the awful,\n Serene idea of self-sacrifice,\n But passion, which of right demands return\n Of passion, nature\u2019s just and ancient barter.\n I want you; I demand you\u2014all yourself.\n I offer all myself.\n\n THORDIS\n What of your brother?\n\n EGIL\n I ask you nothing which he does not ask.\n He offers nothing which I do not offer.\n There was a difference between us once,\n Not now.\n\n THORDIS\n Hath he not made you what you are?\n\n EGIL\n Yes, he and you.\n\n THORDIS\n And in requital now\n You would seduce his bride?\n\n EGIL\n No, not seduce;\n Demand. Yes, though I seem to rave, I speak\n Love and conviction. Judge me, dear my lady.\n You chose between us brothers when we were\n Contrasted in our souls as some meek bard\n Of pity, with a beast. Look on us now\n Again, before it be too late, and choose\n Between us now.\n\n THORDIS\n I have chosen once for all.\n\n EGIL\n But have you chosen blindly?\n [_Points into the wood._]\n Do you see,\n By yonder pine, that wild crab-apple tree?\n\n THORDIS\n I see a tree just bursting into flower.\n\n EGIL\n Is not it beautiful?\n\n THORDIS\n \u2019Tis ravishing.\n\n EGIL\n Last winter, had you passed, you might have seen it\n Writhing its frozen limbs there like a thing\n Accurst, all pinched and scrambled by the pangs\n Of screaming winds; you would have shrunk from it\n Beneath the verdurous pine, in whose sad boughs\n The same winds sung like voices of tuned lyres.\n\n THORDIS\n It may be so.\n\n EGIL\n Yet now behold it, now!\n A pale-rose pyre of fragrance and of flame,\n Wherein, like sacrificial spirits, sit\n The tawny and vermilion birds, and strike\n Their silvery chants in unison, and hung\n Amid the tangled bloom, in murmurous choirs,\n The blazing gold bees shrill their mellow horns.\n Look, Thordis, look again! If you were Freyja,\n Herself, goddess of spring, which would you choose\n For shelter now, and joy?\n\n THORDIS\n [_Gazing at him._]\n Ah me!\n\n EGIL\n If spring\u2014\n If spring and the sweet south can so transform,\n What cannot love? Your warmth, your breath, your soul,\n Soft on my numbness, my deformity,\n Breathed, and I sprung\u2014a burning tree of bloom\u2014\n Beside you. Have you eyes for flights unseen?\n Hearing for choirs unheard? Here, too, beside you\n Fierce swarms of golden fancies work in song\n The fecund pollen of my passion, here\n A thousand bird-wing\u2019d visions nest them down\n Into the heart of me, to chant your praise.\n You that have so transformed me, you repulse me\n Now?\n\n [_Enter right, in the background, Arfi; he pauses unseen._]\n\n THORDIS\n Take your eyes from mine.\n\n EGIL\n You love me; you\n Who fostered me, the wild thing, love me still.\n My secret scar is on you; you are mine,\n Not his.\n\n THORDIS\n Oh, leave me!\n\n EGIL\n Yet you seize my hand.\n\n THORDIS\n Leave me, leave me!\n\n EGIL\n Yet you take me to your heart.\n\n THORDIS\n A myriad loves the heart hath, but one mate.\n Once only may the cry of soul and body\n Be answered; the great need can be but once.\n\n EGIL\n Now is the great need come.\n\n THORDIS\n How may we know?\n\n EGIL\n I am your being\u2019s master. If his soul\n Were listening to us now, I would cry out:\n \u201cI have outgrown thee, brother. What thou art\n I am and more, for I have wrung from thee\n Thy potent mind, and forged it to my passions\n To make a lordlier instrument. Mine, therefore,\n Not thine, the ordain\u00e8d need of her. Mine!\u201d\n\n THORDIS\n Love me!\n [_He kisses her. Arfi moves into the thicket and disappears.\n Thordis, putting Egil from her, draws a dagger upon\n herself._]\n Ah, my betrayer! It is ended.\n\n EGIL\n [_Seizing the knife from her._]\n No;\n You shall not choose so. If that name indeed\n Be mine, keep silence now, while I avenge\n The kiss of thy seducer.\n\n [_As he turns the knife upon himself, Thordis cries out._]\n\n THORDIS\n Egil!\n\n EGIL\n Love!\n [_Springing to her, beside the pool, he recoils._]\n Impending image! persecuting shape!\n Depart.\n\n THORDIS\n Alas! are we both mad?\n\n EGIL\n Remove\n The prying horror of thine eyes. Not now\u2014\n At this the utmost instant of my joy\n Intrude not now.\n\n THORDIS\n Whom do you speak to?\n\n EGIL\n [_Staring past Thordis into the pool._]\n There!\n Look, we have murdered him. It comes to tell us;\n It points at thee, to say thou, too, art guilty.\n We have betrayed and killed him, thou and I.\n See, see! It kneels and craves our sanction.\u2014Rise,\n Remorseless shadow! Go! I give it thee.\n\n [_He hurls the dagger into the pool. As he staggers back,\n Thordis rests his head on her shoulder._]\n\n THORDIS\n Peace, brain and heart!\n\n VOICES\n [_Far away, right, sing._]\n How should the bed, the bridal bed,\n Freyja, be spread?\n Pine garlands at the foot, rose garlands at the head.\n\n EGIL\n Is it gone?\n\n THORDIS\n Nothing is there.\n Rest, rest, poor dreamer!\n\n THE VOICES\n [_Sing._]\n What on the maid, the bride and maid,\n Freyja, be laid?\n The rose\u2019s innocence, ere those fresh garlands fade.\n\n EGIL\n Hark! the bridal virgins!\n [_Thordis shrinks from him._]\n Stay, Thordis; now the awful need is come.\n While yet we are alone in the great silence,\n Now, now, before they find it, pale and red,\n Heaped in the path of roses, now\u2014be mine.\n\n THORDIS\n Freyja, help me! Freyja, goddess and maiden!\n\n EGIL\n His soul descends upon us both, and seals\n This act with blood of sacrifice. His blood\n Our nuptial rite hath reddened.\n\n THORDIS\n Save me!\n\n EGIL\n Hush!\n This is the vernal god, the appalling arm\n That clasped the world i\u2019 the primal age, and moaned\u2014\n \u201cLet there be life!\u201d\u2014Hush, love; do not you hear\n The stealing saps stir through the forest, feel\n The seeking joys of all wild, mating things\n Throb in their blood and ours, their kindred,\u2014\n\n THORDIS\n [_Breaking from him._]\n Help!\n Help, Arfi!\n\n [_She escapes, right, into the wood. As Egil pursues her,\n there steps from the thicket, into his path, Arfi.\n Egil pauses._]\n\n EGIL\n May the dead be summoned back\n To curse us with forgiveness?\u2014Spirit, be stern\n And not compassionate. Come in your wounds,\n Fell and disfigured, not benignly thus.\n Oh, not your love-your vengeance! Not your love!\n [_Shields his eyes with his arms. As he does so, Arfi, with\n a serene gesture, is about to speak, when from the\n thicket Yorul springs silently out and stabs him. Arfi\n falls motionless; Yorul withdraws. Slowly Egil looks\n again._]\n Yea, now thou hast resumed thy murder-garment,\n And hast drawn on thy bridal-robe of wounds,\n And laid thee at my feet in vengeance. Now\n This is indeed thy vengeance\u2014brother! master!\n [_Stoops beside the body._]\n\n VOICES OF THE VIRGINS\n [_Sing, near._]\n What o\u2019er the man the maid shall wed,\n Freyja, be shed?\n The pine\u2019s immortal breath, ere those green boughs are dead.\n\n [_Starting up, fearful, Egil hales the body toward the left,\n but having reached the centre pauses, as the laughter\n of children rises in the way before him. Turning, he\n is dragging the body down scene, when the children,\n scampering in, left, with their aprons and baskets\n full of wild flowers, run towards him. Finger on lip,\n he motions them silence; their laughter and shouts die\n away, awed_.]\n\n EGIL\n He is asleep; the bridegroom is asleep.\n Scatter your wild flowers over him. Look, he smiles,\n He\u2019ll laugh when he awakes and sees them.\u2014Soft!\n\n THE CHILDREN\n [_Whispering, gather in a circle and, pleased as at some game\n of mystery, heap the flowers upon Arfi, and sing low._]\n\n Flowers bring\n And fairy numbers!\n Sweet Spring\n His spirit cumbers.\n Still be highhole! still be thrush!\n Hush! hush!\n Now he slumbers.\n\n [_Treading softly, with covert laughter and \u201chushes,\u201d the\n children steal away. Heaped over the body of Arfi and\n completely concealing it, they have left behind them a\n great pile of arbutus, violets, and other flowers. Some\n of these Egil is replacing more carefully, when the pile\n is shaken from within, and up through it rises the form_\n BALDUR. _Dazzled, Egil kneels._]\n\n BALDUR\n Hail, brother!\n\n EGIL\n Art thou sunlight, or a voice?\n\n BALDUR\n This is the word of Odin!\n [_Egil sinks prostrate._]\n If the wolf\n Seduce to his desire his brother\u2019s bride,\n He shall be lord with her of heaven and earth\n And hell, and by their passion the serene\n And stablished beacons of the gods shall be\n Eclipsed in night, anarchical and void,\n Where, staggering with lust, the blinded world\n Reels back to chaos and the primal dark.\n\n EGIL\n [_Hiding his face._]\n And if the wolf renounce her?\n\n BALDUR\n He shall perish,\n Slain by his own self-mastery, and all\n The spirits of light, freed from that awful dread,\n Shall strew his charnel, singing.\n\n EGIL\n Ah! but she\u2014\n\n BALDUR\n She falters yet; she hangs upon his will.\n The lure of imperfection is the sin\n Of gods, the lure of godhood that of mortals.\n She wavers still.\n\n EGIL\n Bright shadow, golden voice,\n Say what thou art.\n\n BALDUR\n Baldur, the son of Odin.\n\n EGIL\n [_Starts up._]\n Then I\u2014?\n\n BALDUR\n Fenris, the wolf-god!\n [_He sinks again into the flowers, and is gone._]\n\n EGIL\n Ah! the dream!\n The dream is true; the truth is visionary.\n\n [_From the left, two or three of the children return from\n the wood, and stand silent. From the right, the lutes\n and pipes of the bridal procession grow louder, and\n shortly enter the virgins_, INGIMUND, _Thordis,\n Wuldor, and others, as Egil still stands lost in\n soliloquy._]\n\n \u201cAnd there, in slumber, even as mortals dream,\n Slumb\u2019ring, that they are bright, immortal gods,\n You shall be mortals, and shall walk as men,\n Forgetful of your immortality.\u201d\n\n THORDIS\n Was not he with you, father?\n\n INGIMUND\n He went before\n A little space, to greet you first.\u2014My child,\n Why do you cling to me?\n\n EGIL\n [_Approaching her._]\n Goddess and maiden!\n\n THORDIS\n He\u2019s mad. Save us! We both are mad.\n\n INGIMUND\n Thy brother,\n Where is he?\n\n EGIL\n Father, he hath gone before\n A little space, but left thy word with me.\n\n INGIMUND\n _My_ word?\n\n EGIL\n The word of truth.\n\n [_A little girl, moving back some of the flowers, has\n disclosed the dead body of Arfi, blood-stained._]\n\n THE LITTLE GIRL\n He\u2019s still asleep.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Goes to it with a cry._]\n Arfi!\n\n WULDOR\n I thought it, Ingimund; he\u2019s murdered.\n\n INGIMUND\n His bane! What hand struck this?\n\n EGIL\n Lo, I will tell;\n The dream must end. Thou saidest: He shall perish,\n And all the spirits of light, freed from that dread,\n Shall strew his charnel, singing.\n\n INGIMUND\n Madman! Thou\u2014\n\n YORUL\n [_Entering from the thicket._]\n _I_ murdered him.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Starting up from the body._]\n Yorul!\n\n YORUL\n [_Showing dagger._]\n His blood is here.\n\n EGIL\n Yet shall the dreamers wake, the truth prevail.\n\n YORUL\n \u2019Twas I! This hand\u2014\n\n EGIL\n And shall that hand put out\n The beacons of the gods with primal dark,\n And hurl the blinded world to chaos?\n\n THORDIS\n Egil!\n Thou art innocent! Oh, in this blank of death\n That truth remains.\n\n EGIL\n [_Turning upon Yorul._]\n Scourge and seductor!\n\n INGIMUND\n [_To Egil._]\n Speak!\n Hath this man done this deed?\n\n EGIL\n [_Slowly._]\n Yes; it was Yorul.\n\n [_Yorul is seized._]\n\n\n\n\nACT IV\n\n\nSCENE: The rune-stone.\n\n _A white-rose bush, beside it, in bloom; a flame on the\n altar; sunset._\n\n _Enter_ EGIL, _alone_.\n\n EGIL\n Put it away? To put all from me\u2014all\u2014\n Or else despoil! Renounce, or with a kiss\n Consume the bright seduction! Mar\u2014relinquish,\n In either path, to suffer; yet to see\n Myself at last for what I am, to know\n The inexorable bars, the nudging rafters,\n The starry lych-gate and the pit of tears\n Of this my soul and penthouse.\u2014And the escape!\n To know that I\u2014myself the miracle\n I worshipped\u2014am a god, a sovereign lord\n Of nature, powerful to make the bounds\n And marches of the heaven my petty fiefs\n Of mind,\u2014yet what a god! A clawed usurper,\n That snatches from the shoulders of the gods\n The green and azure cloth of summer-time,\n This human tapestry of spring and harvest\n Star-wrought with sanguine hearts and golden sheaves,\n And tears it, tooth-meal, for a wolf\u2019s lair.\u2014This,\n This also must have challenge: Might not Egil\n O\u2019ermaster Fenris? Can the mind o\u2019ermaster\n The will?\n [_Supplicating the rune-stone._]\n O mystery, that made us two\n Yet one, resolve thyself and this and seal it!\n To put all, all away, or with a kiss consume?\n\n [_Pausing, he breaks a white rose, and holding it near\n and nearer the altar-flame watches it\u2014as though for\n a sign\u2014till it scorches; then snatching it back,\n extinguishes the flame. While he is bending over thus_,\n THORDIS _enters,\u2014in her hands a rope of\n twined arbutus-flowers. All in white, she is very pale;\n approaching behind Egil, she watches over his shoulder\n the rose petals and the flame. Suddenly, throwing the\n rope of arbutus over his head, she winds it about him.\n Turning, he drops the rose, and they gaze at each other,\n anguished._]\n\n EGIL\n [_After a silence._]\n Why have you left the body?\n\n THORDIS\n [_Binding his arms down with the blossoms._]\n I have come\n To bring you back in chains to prison.\n\n EGIL\n Where\u2014\n\n THORDIS\n I know a dungeon where the dead are not.\n\n EGIL\n Where\u2014have you left the body?\n\n THORDIS\n They are bringing\n Their burden here.\n\n EGIL\n These flowers?\n\n THORDIS\n Arbutus.\n\n EGIL\n Those?\n And you could weave of those this chain for me?\n\n THORDIS\n Could weave a garland of a winding-sheet?\n I could; I did; and whilst I wove, I heard\n Above my head the small birds singing \u201cHorror,\u201d\n And underfoot \u201cHorror\u201d the sweet grass sang;\n But in my bosom sung, \u201cHe loves me.\u201d\n\n EGIL\n Keep\n From me, lest thou be scorched.\n\n THORDIS\n Was he not gentle,\n Exalted, tender? Who that saw his smile\n But thought \u201cA star breaks\u201d?\u2014Now for us all dark,\n A shape of clay. Oh, why should sudden love\n Come like the tempest, and blot out from skies\n Of memory all golden yesterdays?\n But so it is; the storm of thee shuts down\n Over my world; thy lightnings have put out\n His smile.\n\n EGIL\n Is it not enough that I have spilled\n His blood upon my soul, but must that, more,\n Pollute the whiteness of a goddess\u2019 heart\n And desecrate perfection?\n\n THORDIS\n [_With a wan smile of pain, drawing him with the\n arbutus toward her._]\n Come\u2014to prison.\n\n EGIL\n His blood, I said; did you not hear? Not Yorul\u2014\n _I_ murdered him!\n\n THORDIS\n You do not understand;\n It was not you; \u2019twas I.\n\n EGIL\n The hand of Yorul\n Stabbed him, but my intent.\n\n THORDIS\n You do not ask\n Where I\u2019ve prepared your dungeon.\u2014Come.\n\n EGIL\n Too late,\n You precious chains! I am free.\n\n THORDIS\n Thy words again!\n \u201cFree, but alone, adrift!\u201d I hear thee still,\n Forever, calling in thy need of me\u2014\n \u201cO take me back, the wild thing!\u201d Come!\u2014I take thee;\n I nestle thee once more, a captive. Come,\n Alone no more!\n\n EGIL\n It is too late. \u2019Tis he,\n Your god and lover, whom they are bringing back\n To claim you.\n\n THORDIS\n [_Clinging to him._]\n Who shall claim me from your side?\n\n [_Enter a procession of folk, virgins, and children, bearing\n a low bier, covered with a cloth of green, behind which\n walks_ YORUL, _bound_. INGIMUND, _who\n enters first, ascends, by the stone steps, the altar,\n before which the bier is set down. While this is being\n borne, the dirge continues._]\n\n VIRGINS AND CHILDREN\n [_Chant._]\n Heiri! heiri! heiri!\n Othin ok \u00c6sir!\n\n [_Ingimund signs to a priest to loosen the hands of Yorul,\n who stands in front of the bier._]\n\n INGIMUND\n Give him the cup. The murderer shall drink\n The bane of murder.\n\n [_The priest hands to Yorul a cup, which, as he raises it\n quietly to his lips, is wrenched from his hand by Egil,\n who embraces him._]\n\n EGIL\n My deliverer!\u2014\n Brother, awake! I give thee back thy bride.\n [_On the bier, the green cloth is thrown back, and_\n BALDUR, _rising, steps upon the altar._\n THORDIS _gazes upon him._]\n This is my heart\u2019s desire\u2014take it! \u2019tis yours.\n\n BALDUR\n Freyja!\n\n THORDIS\n [_With a wild cry, going to him._]\n Baldur!\n\n THE FOLK\n [_Prostrating themselves._]\n The gods! the gods!\n\n [_Thordis and Ingimund, by Baldur\u2019s side, are transfigured,\n and a hedge of flowers and flame springs up before the\n altar, encircling the three._]\n\n EGIL\n [_Apart, drinks from the cup._]\n To freedom!\n\n [_Baldur and Thordis, clinging to each other, look at Egil._]\n\n YORUL\n [_Staring at Baldur, speaks to Egil._]\n Whom, lord, dost thou name \u201cbrother\u201d?\n\n EGIL\n Him\u2014and thee,\n Both, for through me henceforward you are kindred.\n Yorul! my men, my liegemen! you\u2014you also\n Conceived in chains and born in passion, you\n Also, who from an immemorial brute\n Rage for emancipation, oh, forget not\n Your brother Fenris, him who was brought forth\n A glorious miscarriage of the gods,\n To be exalted to a man.\n [_He sinks upon the bier._]\n The chains!\n Yorul\u2014the chains!\n\n [_Striving to break the arbutus links, which hang loosely\n upon him, he falls back._]\n\n YORUL\n Master!\n\n ODIN\n The wolf is tamed.\n\n [_In sudden fire, the gods disappear, leaving deep twilight.\n Vague, the body of Egil lies dead on the bier._ _Beside\n it, amid the prostrate folk, rising alone, stands Yorul,\n with arms upreached toward the rune-stone._]\n\n THE VIRGINS AND CHILDREN\n [_Singing._]\n Heiri! heiri! heiri!\n Balthur ok Freyja!\n\n [_Far off, the ice-crown of the volcano flushes in\n the afterglow._]\n\n\n\n\n * * * * * *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s note:\n\n Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.\n\n Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations\n in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.\n\n Each act in the original had a full page identifying the act as well\n as a heading at the beginning of the act. The full page act numbers\n have been removed from this edition as being redundant.","title":"Fenris, the Wolf: A Tragedy","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":17950}