eyes were sleeping and blind
The while he devoured the prey, a golden red-flecked trout.
Then passed by Odin and Haenir, nor cumbered their souls with doubt;
But Loki lingered a little, and guile in his heart arose,
And he saw through the shape of the Otter, and beheld a chief of his
foes,
A king of the free and the careless: so he called up his baleful might,
And gathered his godhead together, and tore a shard outright
From the rock-wall of the river, and across its green wells cast;
And roaring over the waters that bolt of evil passed,
And smote my brother Otter that his heart's life fled away,
And bore his man's shape with it, and beast-like there he lay,
Stark dead on the sun-lit blossoms: but the Evil God rejoiced,
And because of the sound of his singing the wild grew many-voiced.

"Then the three Gods waded the river, and no word Haenir spake,
For his thoughts were set on God-home, and the day that is ever awake.
But Odin laughed in his wrath, and murmured: 'Ah, how long,
Till the iron shall ring on the anvil for the shackles of thy wrong!'

"Then Loki takes up the quarry, and is e'en as a man again;
And the three wend on through the wild-wood till they come to a
grassy plain
Beneath the untrodden mountains; and lo a noble house,
And a hall with great craft fashioned, and made full glorious;
But night on the earth was falling; so scantly might they see
The wealth of its smooth-wrought stonework and its world of imagery:
Then Loki bade turn thither since day was at an end,
And into that noble dwelling the lords of God-home wend;
And the porch was fair and mighty, and so smooth-wrought was its gold,
That the mirrored stars of heaven therein might ye behold:
But the hall, what words shall tell it, how fair it rose aloft,
And the marvels of its windows, and its golden hangings soft,
And the forest of its pillars! and each like the wave's heart shone,
And the mirrored boughs of the garden were dancing fair thereon.
--Long years agone was it builded, and where are its wonders now?

"Now the men of God-home marvelled, and gazed through the golden glow,
And a man like a covetous king amidst of the hall they saw;
And his chair was the tooth of the whale, wrought smooth with never a
flaw;
And his gown was the sea-born purple, and he bore a crown on his head,