n, save the shapeless chaos, nothing was:
Of Ymer first, by some named Oergelmir,
The giant sire of all the giant brood:--
Him for his sins the sons of Boer destroyed;
Then fashioned of his blood the seas and streams,
And of his bones the mountains; of his teeth
The cliffs firm set against the aggressive waves;
Last, of his skull the vast, o'er-hanging heaven;
And of his brain the clouds.
'Sing on,' they cried:
Next sang he of that mystic shape, earth-born,
The wondrous cow, Auhumla. Herb that hour
Was none, nor forest growth; yet on and on
She wandered by the vapour-belted seas,
And, wandering, from the stones and icebergs cold
That creaked forlorn against the grey sea-crags,
She licked salt spray, and hoary frost, and lived;
And ever where she licked sprang up, full-armed,
Men fair and strong!
Once more they cried, 'Sing on!'
Last sang the minstrel of the Night and Day:
Car-borne they sweep successive through the heaven:
First rides the dusky maid by men called Night;
Sleep-bringing, pain-assuaging, kind to man;
With dream-like speed cleaving the starry sphere:
Hrimfaxi is her horse: his round complete
Foam from his silver bit bespangles earth,
And mortals call it 'Morn.' Day follows fast,
Her brother white: Skinfaxi is his horse:
When forth he flings the splendours from his mane
Both Gods and men rejoice.
Thus legends old
The Northman sang, till, fleeting from men's eyes,
The present lived no longer. In its place
He fixed that vision of the world new formed,
Which on the childhood of the Northern mind
Like endless twilight lay;--spaces immense;
Unmeasured energies of fire and flood;
Great Nature's forces, terrible yet blind,
In ceaseless strife alternately supreme,
Or breast to breast with dreadful equipoise
In conflict pressed. Once more o'er those that heard
He hung that old world's low, funereal sky:
Before their eyes he caused its cloud to stream
Shadowing infinitude. He spake no word
Like Heida of that war 'twixt Good and Ill;
That peace which crowns the just; that God unknown:
Enough to him his Faith without its soul!
With glorying eye he marked that panting throng;
Then, sudden, changed his note. Again of war
He sang, but