She sang: "The winds from Alfheim
Bring never sound of strife;
The gifts for Frey the meetest
Are not of death, but life.

"He loves the grass-green meadows,
The grazing kine's sweet breath;
He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,
Your gifts that smell of death.

"No wrong by wrong is righted,
No pain is cured by pain;
The blood that smokes from Doom-rings
Falls back in redder rain.

"The gods are what you make them,
As earth shall Asgard prove;
And hate will come of hating,
And love will come of love.

"Make dole of skyr and black bread
That old and young may live;
And look to Frey for favor
When first like Frey you give.

"Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows
The summer dawn begins
The tun shall have its harvest,
The fiord its glancing fins."

Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell
"By Gimli and by Hel,
O Vala of Thingvalla,
Thou singest wise and well!

"Too dear the AEsir's favors
Bought with our children's lives;
Better die than shame in living
Our mothers and our wives.

"The full shall give his portion
To him who hath most need;
Of curdled skyr and black bread,
Be daily dole decreed."

He broke from off his neck-chain
Three links of beaten gold;
And each man, at his bidding,
Brought gifts for young and old.

Then mothers nursed their children,
And daughters fed their sires,
And Health sat down with Plenty
Before the next Yule fires.

The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;
The Doom-ring still remains;
But the snows of a thousand winters
Have washed away the stains.

Christ ruleth now; the Asir
Have found their twilight dim;
And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
The Vala sang of Him

1868.

THE TWO RABBINS.

THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten
Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,
Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,
Met a temptation all too strong to bear,
And miserably sinned. So, adding not
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught
No more among the elders, but went out
From the great congregation girt about
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,
Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid