his face, though pale as that of one long dead, was
stern as the face of a warrior in the van of armed men; he stretched his
hand, and he smote his saex on his shield, and the clang sounded hollow;
the gyves broke at the clash--I sprang to my feet, and I stood side by
side with the phantom, dauntless. Then, suddenly, the mitre on the skull
changed to a helm; and where the skull had grinned, trunkless and
harmless, stood a shape like War, made incarnate;--a Thing above giants,
with its crest to the stars and its form an eclipse between the sun and
the day. The earth changed to ocean, and the ocean was blood, and the
ocean seemed deep as the seas where the whales sport in the North, but
the surge rose not to the knee of that measureless image. And the ravens
came round it from all parts of the heaven, and the vultures with the
dead eyes and dull scream. And all the bones, before scattered and
shapeless, sprung to life and to form, some monks and some warriors; and
there was a hoot, and a hiss, and a roar, and the storm of arms. And a
broad pennon rose out of the sea of blood, and from the clouds came a
pale hand, and it wrote on the pennon, 'Harold, the Accursed!' Then said
the stern shape by my side, 'Harold, fearest thou the dead men's bones?'
and its voice was as a trumpet that gives strength to the craven, and I
answering, 'Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the bones of the
dead!'"

"As I spoke, as if hell had burst loose, came a gibber of scorn, and all
vanished at once, save the ocean of blood. Slowly came from the north,
over the sea, a bird like a raven, save that it was blood-red, like the
ocean; and there came from the south, swimming towards me, a lion. And I
looked to the spectre; and the pride of war had gone from its face, which
was so sad that methought I forgot raven and lion, and wept to see it.
Then the spectre took me in its vast arms, and its breath froze my veins,
and it kissed my brow and my lips, and said, gently and fondly, as my
mother in some childish sickness, 'Harold, my best beloved, mourn not.
Thou hast all which the sons of Woden dreamed in their dreams of
Valhalla!' Thus saying, the form receded slowly, slowly, still gazing on
me with its sad eyes. I stretched forth my hand to detain it, and in my
grasp was a shadowy sceptre. And, lo! round me, as if from the earth,
sprang up thegns and chiefs, in their armour; and a board was spread, and
a wassail was blithe around me. So