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I.

 

Sing again of Gerda, poet:

Sing of her was wooed by spring-god,

Giantess of skin like snow-shine,

She who wept upon her father

 

Slain by sword was gifted to her

In a time so fresh-sun-beaming,

In what seemed an age of morning,

Not this autumn fast declining…

 

Gerda of the lovely tresses,

Gerda proud and tender-hearted,

Who hath served her asa-husband

Through the long years, ever loving:

 

Still there dwells a sorrow in her,

Sadness dulled, a bitter soft’ning,

Memory of hall and hearth-fire,

Father lying in his life-blood.

 

 

II.

 

Autumn season red and somber,

Autumn with its heart in winter,

Sits now like a pond’ring spirit

On this eve as cold is creeping…

 

High in mountains, in a fountain

Bubbling with the warmth of Jord’s heart,

’Mid the melting frost and ice-blocks,

Often Gerda, nude and lustrous,

 

Splashes water-handfuls o’er her,

O’er her hair and o’er her white skin

As the eagle soareth over,

As the day-god spies her beauty

 

All unguarded ’midst the glaciers

Where each rock-fall far re-echoes,

Where the ears of distant troll-kings

Hear each clack and knock of stone-shift 

 

’Cross that world, landscape of haze-tufts,

Earth of wiggling things and shadows,

Crevice, cave, crevasse, caldera,

Rimy frost-peaks stabbing blue sky,

 

Colors where the wife hath wandered,

Far from husband, far from Alfheim:

Green and black of ancient pine-woods,

Rain-gray rivers, flower-white hillsides,

 

All beneath great void of upwards,

Valhall’s grandeur, Bifrost’s arching,

Underneath sky-realm of Gladsheim,

Lofty reaches of glad Gladsheim…

 

Still Sol’s burning in her chariot,

Like a torch high-tossed at blue sky,

Blowing heat-waves down at low earth,

Drifting through the dream-like welkin…

 

Now a something unexpected

Hovers in the beaming midday,

Unknown, unthought, by no eye caught,

Living in the looming Nowhere:

 

Mind of wizard – cunning, mystic,

Eyes and ears perched in the blank sky –

Watches Gerda, lists to music 

Of the fountain warmed by Jord’s heart:

 

Bubbles playing, bubbles jostling,

Burbling like the secret beating

Of that organ hot and panting

Of the goddess who’s the fair earth.

 

Soon the sky by subtle stirring

Changes into cloak of nightfall,

Dons the purple robe so softly,

Veils herself from glaring day-god,

 

While the wizard, urging, willing, 

Summons creature of the hot pools

So far down, far down near Helheim

Where the steam is huffing, seething –

 

Urges fish, teeth-grim and leering,

Born of swirling sulphur-water,

Up the spouts to swim and wiggle,

Up those geysers hot as forge-fire:

 

Through black labyrinth of the fissures,

Through great veins of Ymir’s carcass,

Heaved by bubbles’ anxious impulse

Towards the fount of Gerda’s bathing,

 

’Til that fish, whale-great and frightful,

Like a nightmare in the bubbling,

From cave-spring emerges smiling

As the sky dons nightfall’s vestment –

 

See the jaws wide-opening, yawning…

See! Poor giant-maiden’s swallowed:

Fast in fish-mouth held as prisoner;

And the teeth slam shut like cell bars.

 

Rain clouds from the four directions, 

Blown by four winds towards the center,

Gather o’er that fish that’s sliding

Down the cooling mountain streamlets;

 

And amid such stormy tumult –

Thunderheads grand, dark, and pregnant –

Wrapped in robes that flap about him,

Like a bird with wings close-huddled,

 

Wizard watches from cold summit

In a vast and tragic darkness,

Glaring from that peak in black space:

Watches great fish slipping, spilling

 

Far away to broader currents,

Far away unto the ocean,

Bearing giantess within him,

Journeying to wizard’s stronghold.

 

 

III.

 

Tide and toss and billows bulging,

Rain and rolling, spume and splatter:

Fish of green scales paddles through these,

’Twixt the plains of sea and sky-storm –

 

While within flesh-boat so mournful,

’Tween the slimy tongue and mouth-roof,

Gerda sobs in sloshing darkness,

Sobs to think of children, husband…

 

And the storm, by days it passeth,

As the wide sea comes a-settling.

Still the fish grins, leering, leering;

Still the sun drives, like a mystery –

 

Lofty mystery; and enigma

Shines by night o’er wastes of waters.

Endless weeks those eyes celestial,

And the stars, watch swimming green fish –

 

’Til at last upon a strange shoal,

Strange as shifting cloud-formations,

Strange as silence on the dark moor,

Fish is hefted by the sea-surge 

 

And set down; and toothy portal

Opes to cast on Gerd the bright shine:

Sight of sea-abandoned coral,

Of the tangled drying sea-weed…

 

Hills of grey, and blowing shadows,

Birds of white eyes ’mong the rushes,

Birds like souls and sprites Gerd watches;

And she steps upon the cold sand.

 

Six knights wait before a black wood,

Six knights hidden by their helmets;

And poor Gerd set they on horseback,

And conduct her through the green land –

 

Through white trees and rows of orchards

Where the sun beats woozy, dazzling,

Where the sour and bitter fruits grow,

Where the sky’s both grey and radiant,

 

To a palace, dwarf-dug palace,

House that looms as mountain-stronghold;

And in maze knights lock her surely,

Maze of beauteous walls and gardens 

 

Where the waters run hypnotic,

Out of spouts and through thin channels,

Through the rocky winding channels,

Feeding blossoms, feeding sour fruits –

 

So walks Gerd long in that labyrinth,

Labyrinth spreading past horizon,

Through the sun-hot ways of orchards,

Through the cold ways of the tunnels…

 

And within such eerie quiet

Comes at last dark mage to woo her,

Comes in black and dreadful vestment

Through the hallways stony, spacious.

 

 

IV.

 

“Love no more thy husband, Gerda.

“Love him not,” saith wily sorcerer.

“Think of how his servant Skirnir

Threw his sword and slew thy father –

 

“Slew thy father, who lay dying

At thy knees, in seeping blood-pool –

For this treason, love not spring-god,

Turn thy heart away from elf-prince –

 

“Though through long years thou hast served him,

Served him as his wife and helpmate,

Scorn him now, for heart that slayeth

Knoweth passion, but not fair love –

 

“Bide thou here, for aye and always;

Take the good things I might offer,

Conjured from the lore of magic,

Conjured to adorn thy beauty:

 

“Necklaces from plundered gold-hoards,

Brooches won from serpents’ slumber,

Torques bought with the dragons’ life-blood,

Rings and bangles, blinking star-like –

 

“Kirtles woven by the fairies,

Scarves and stockings, smooth and silken,

Hats and hennins, nets and gorgets,

All such things to make thee gorgeous –

 

“Pets thou’lt have amidst the parterres:

Fawns and lambs and lively rabbits,

Peacocks and the strident pheasants,

Pets to feed and give caresses –

 

“And above all things, those jewels

Carved by little men below us,

Carved and cut in foggy fissures,

Carved to catch the sunbeam’s splendor –

 

“Give thy love, fair Gerda: Tell me

Where thou stowest sword Frey gave thee,

That my night-bird might retrieve it:

Give thy sword, a lover’s promise!”

 

But the giantess in sorrow

Tells not wizard where her sword lies,

For her fealty to husband,

For her faith to home and children;

 

But still pleads, in hot-voiced whispers,

Through proud Gerda’s sleep and waking,

Wizard for that sword was granted 

By the slaught’ring god of springtime…

 

And as ice-blocks melt in steaming

Of founts from abysses welling

From the blackness of the dark earth,

Slowly Gerd to sorcerer yieldeth.

 

 

V.

 

“In a far branch of the world-tree,

Out in vast and tragic darkness,

Lives the shining land of Alfheim,

Where I keep the sword Frey gave me –

 

“Buildings twelve there stand in Alfheim,

Golden piles with stairs and columns:

Golden columns rising leg-like,

Like the legs of glimm’ring giants –

 

“On a peak beyond all others,

Perched above the plunging shadow,

Rests that hall where Ingvi’s slumb’ring,

Where’s our empty marriage-chamber –

 

“In a chest beside the bed-post,

By the sleeping son of Nerthus:

That is where my sword is slumb’ring,

Sword that made me half an orphan –

 

“Send thy night-bird over elf-home,

Send him while the moon is driving,

To retrieve my pledge of loving

That I’ll gift thee for thy wooing.”

 

So the wizard, glad and grateful,

Opes the cage his night-bird roosts in,

And at violet death of day’s life,

Tells it where to seek that wound-stick –

 

But once wizard’s vanished surely,

And before two wings spread open,

Gerda whispers to that night-bird,

Whispers soft as evening zephyr…

 

And like fleet nocturnal specter,

Like a haunting on the frost-wind,

Night-bird flies through dusk and light-loss,

Through the black and golden layers.

 

 

VI.

 

“Welcome, night-bird! Well met, minion!”

Saith the sorcerer in the morn’s flush.

“And thou hast in beak that bright sword

Hidden near the son of Nerthus!

 

“Sol and Dag shake off their stupor,

And hitch cart to horse of bright mane…

Oh, my fondest hope’s been granted 

By the goddesses of fortune!”

 

’Midst the curling vines and crumbling

Mounds of earth and vegetation,

’Midst the pink-orange layers of morning,

Night-bird hovers, settles gently,

 

And, as Dag renews his circuit,

Drops the sword from beak to sorcerer,

Drops Gerd’s token of betrothal;

And with awe the wizard lifts it.

 

“Now fulfill thy marriage-promise,”

Speaketh Gerd. “Frey I’ve foresaken;

And wish I to live in far land,

With thee in this magic far land –

 

“Live for aye ensorcelled sweetly,

Petting deer and petting coney

On these lawns – and in this labyrinth,

Live in maze so odd and silent…”

 

But the wizard telleth nothing,

Only glaring on that bright sword,

Turning it to catch the sunbeams,

Catching sunbeams like a bright force –

 

And to Gerda then it seemeth

All the lands collapse in shadow:

Plains and gulfs of gorgeous darkness –

Glintings meager, yon and hither –

 

Temples perched on hill and hillock,

Lumined faintly at their windows –

Movements of the jostling storm-gods:

All appear ’cross vision-landscape…

 

Look! Dances the mage with flame-life,

Like some devil of the chasm;

And his stronghold looms like mountain

Smoking with earth-heat of hatred –

 

Woe, oh Gerd! How banished swevens

Promised eyes of thine untruly!

Six knights are the sons of Muspell,

And night-bird’s a coiling dragon –

 

Sword of thine sparks fiercely, fiercely,

In fell grip of Surt, the demon:

Sword what slays thy spring-god husband

In that war of all worlds’ ending!

 

Flame-walls rise, nightmares run swarming;

Laughter’s in Gerd’s ears, so mocking!

But she plunges hand in bird’s throat,

Bird that’s changed to drake so writhing –

 

And she pulls the ship Skidbladnir,

Ship that’s folded tight and neatly,

Ship she bade the night-bird swallow

Ere it snatched her sword from casket:

 

Bade bird pluck it from Frey’s pocket –

And now ’mid such swirling terrors,

Whirlwinds of fires and fuming,

Gerd the boat unfolds, and leaps in –

 

And on magic winds and wind-blasts

Blessing ship the little dwarfs built,

Gerda soars from wid’ning blackness,

Spreading smoke, and scenes of red fire –

 

Over ocean, into morning,

Over sea the green fish journeyed,

Into spreading arms of warm sun,

Into fulgor of the day-birth –

 

Through the world-tree’s limbs and branches,

Through the purple space of warm light,

Over Midgard, over dwarf-home,

Over land of lumb’ring giants –

 

Blown by zephyrs, calming cloud-breaths,

Into glowing elfin country,

Past eleven halls of columns,

Columns like the legs of giants –

 

To that hall the spring-god sleeps in,

Perched above the plunging shadow,

Hall of children of their union,

Hall where all rests sound, and soundless –

 

And Gerd steps upon the stone porch,

And she folds the ship so tightly;

Steals to bedroom, stepping softly,

And slips boat in husband’s pocket –

 

Then on bed of hers she lieth,

Panting deep, but measured, softly;

And as Frey first stirs and murmurs,

Gerda fainteth on her cold bed.

 

 

VII.

 

“Gerda! I’ve much joy to see thee!”

Speaketh Ingvi as Dag rises.

“Oft hast thou abroad been roaming,

Roaming towards the who-knows-whither…

 

“But now children thrill to see thee,

And thy calves and knees they cling to;

And the land is glowing golden,

Golden with the autumn richness –

 

“Autumn which has heart in winter;

Now, do tell me where in far realms

Thou didst ramble, and what wonders

Kept thee long from turning homeward…”

 

“Long I’ve wandered – but seemed nothing,”

Gerda saith. “I walked in Nowhere,

Nothing saw, and No One spoke to,

Never thinking where I might be –

 

“ ’Til a certain place I came to,

Sad as boneyard, damp as fog bank,

That like dreams did seem to whisper:

Journey back the way thou camest –

 

“And my blood now’s all a-trembling,

Like a lamb in cold air shiv’ring,

Like the hearts of frigid creatures,

Creatures in the midst of winter –

 

“So no more shall I meander:

In this bed I’ll lay my head down,

Though night’s passed, and day’s ascending

In the mild and misty autumn.”

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(The Devil Giant with the Flaming Sword by John Charles Dollman)

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