se roofs and walls of yawning serpents slick
Hang writhing down, flat heads--reed-beds of snakes--
From whose red, hissing fangs flow slimy streams
Of blist'ring venom, gath'ring to a flood,
Wherein the basest shades eternal wade
And feel the anguish crawling down the neck,
Or glue the hair, or glut the dull, dead ear,
Or choke the blasted eye until it swims
In lurid pain and blazes 'gainst the source.
The roar of waters and the wail of pines
When whirlwinds roll the granite bowlders down
From flinty crags of storm to bellowing seas--
On noisome winds the howls of torture roll,
And rising die, cause the live dome to writhe,
And swift pour down a tempest steep of woe.

Huge Skade, of Winter daughter, giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above Loke's head,
So that the blistering slaver might splash down
Upon his chalky face, and torture him,--
For so the Asas willed for his vast crimes.

But Loke's wife, Sigin, endured not this,
And brooked not to behold her husband's pain.
She sate herself beside his writhen limbs,
And held a cup to cull the venomed dew
Which flamed the scowling blackness as it fell.
To him she spake, who swelled his breast and groaned
E'en as some mighty sea, when 'neath its waves
The huge leviathan by whalers chased,--
Cleaving thick waters in his spinning flight,
The barbed harpoon feasting on his life,--
Rolls up pale mounded billows o'er black fins
Far in the North Atlantic's sounding seas:--

"O Loke! lock those wide-drawn eyes of thine,
And let white silver-lidded slumber fall
In the soft utterance of my low speech!
And I will flutter all my amber curls
To cast wind currents o'er thy pallid brow!--
Drink deepest sleep, for, see, I catch thy doom!--
So pale thy face which glimmers thro' the night!
So pale! and knew I death as mortals know
I'd say that he mysterious had on thee
Laid hands of talons and so slain thy soul!
So still! and all the night bears down my heart!
So pale!--and sleep is lost to thee and me!--
Sleep, that were welcome in this heavy gloom!--
It clings to me like pestilential fogs!
I seem but clodded filth and float in filth!
It chokes my words and claws them from my tongue
To sound as dull confused as the boom
Heard thro' the stagnant earth when armies meet
With