124

THE DEATH OF ARNKEL.

Cleaving with both hands, parried blow on b Till, shaft by shaft, their spears splinter snapt;

Nor would they yet have reached him, but th Gathering a mighty stroke at Thorleif's head Dashed down his runner on the icy fence And shivered it, while backwards Thorleif f Bending the slimness of his supple loins, Unwounded. Then a moment's space they Silent. Then from the hay-stack at his back His glittering sword and buckler Arnkel seiz And like a wildcat clomb the stack, and stoo Thigh-deep, astride upon the quivering hay, Raining down thrusts and blinding all his for With moony lightnings from the flashing ste But Thorleif clambered up behind his back, And Snorri, with his shield before his face, Harassed him through the wavering veil of 1 And Styrr, like some great monster of the fe Swayed his huge broadsword in his knotted. And swept it, singing, through the helm and And deep sank Arnkel on the bloody stack.

They wrapped his corse in hay, and left him To whom within the silence of the night Came that dark ghost, his father, whose blac Affrights the maidens in the milking-stead; And till afar along the frozen road

The tinkling of the sleighs he heard, and kn That, all too late, the thralls of Arnkel cam He hung above the body of his son,

THE CHORISTER.

Casting no shadow in the dazzling moon,
Cursing the gods with inarticulate voice,
And cursing that too envious mood of men
That brooks no towering excellence, nor heeds
Virtue, nor welfare of the unsceptred state.

125

EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE.

THE CHORISTER.

SNOW on the high-pitched minster roof and spire: Snow on the boughs of leafless linden trees:

Snow on the silent streets and squares that freeze Under night's wing down-drooping nigh and nigher. Inside the church, within the shadowy choir,

Dim burn the lamps like lights on vaporous seas; Drowsed are the voices of droned litanies;

Blurred as in dreams the face of priest and friar. Cold hath numbed sense to slumber here! But

hark,

One swift soprano, soaring like a lark,

Startles the stillness; throbs that soul of fire,

Beats around arch and isle, floods echoing dark
With exquisite aspiration; higher, higher,
Yearns in sharp anguish of untold desire!

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
In Black and White.

126

WINTER NIGHTS IN THE HIGH

THE PORTENT.

AT dead of one wild, starless winter night,
I woke from out a tranquil, dreamless sle
And heard the wind with vengeful clamor
From some tumultuous cloud-veiled mountain
And like the echo of mad waves that smite

A rock-ribbed coast, and, baffled, backwar Into the bosom of the yawning deep, Seemed the dread sounds that told the te might.

But while I raised my heart in silent prayer
For those who sailed the trackless waste o
In foam-capped serried ridges towering
There came a lull; no sound assailed the air
When, like a portent of what was to be,
A death-watch ticked within my chambe
CLINTON SO

WINTER NIGHTS IN THE HIGH A NOTES of a mute, not melancholy world,

A world of snows and darkness and moonOf still, crystalline air and stars serene, And stationary pines in slumber furled: Notes of the sober night, when drift is whirle By tireless winds over the solemn scene, When the lake-pavement groans, and mists be The shadowy mountain tops are coldly curled

WINTER NIGHTS IN THE HIGH ALPS.

127

Notes of a meditative man who walks

Those white fields and that ice-floor all alone, Yet draws warm life from winter's frozen wells; Notes of a soul that most divinely talks

Unto herself in silence and hath known

The God that in the mystic moon-world dwells.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.