THE BLUE CLOSET.* The Damozels.

Lady Alice, lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas
We are ready to sing, if so ye please:
So lay your long hands on the keys;
Sing, "Laudate pueri.''1

And ever the great bell overhead

Boomed in the wind a knell for the dead, Though no one tolled it, a knell for the dead. Lady Louise.

Sister, let the measure swell

Not too loud; for you sing not well

If you drown the faint boom of the bell;
He is weary, so am I.

And ever the chevron2 overhead
Flapped on the banner of the dead;
(Was he asleep, or was he dead?)
Lady Alice

Alice the Queen, and Louise the Queen,
Two damozels wearing purple and green,
Four lone ladies dwelling here

From day to day and year to year;
And there is none to let us go,

To break the locks of the doors below,
Or shovel away the heaped-up snow;
And when we die no man will know
That we are dead; but they give us leave,
Once every year on Christmas-eve,
To sing in the Closet Blue one song;
And we should be so long, so long,
If we dared, in singing; for dream on dream,
They float on in a happy stream;
Float from the gold strings, float from the
keys,

Float from the opened lips of Louise;
But, alas! the sea-salt oozes through
The chinks of the tiles of the Closet Blue;
And ever the great bell overhead
Booms in the wind a knell for the dead,
The wind plays on it a knell for the dead.

They Sing All Together

How long ago was it, how long ago,

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He came to this tower with hands full of snow?

1 "Praise ye, youths." The beginning of the socalled Irish version of the familiar hymn, Te Deum Laudamus.

2 A V-shaped device.

Written for a picture (a water-color) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The romantic theme, the mediaeval remoteness, the color and sound, the sharpness of detail with the vagueness of general outline and setting, are all in the early Pre-Raphaelite manner. See Eng. Lit., pp. 370, 374.

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And ever the great bell overhead,

And the tumbling seas mourned for the dead; For their song ceased, and they were dead!

FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE
AN APOLOGY

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.

But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,

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Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter,

The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter

These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

FROM SIGURD THE VOLSUNG*

OF THE PASSING AWAY OF BRYNHILD Once more on the morrow-morning fair shineth the glorious sun,

And the Niblung children labour on a deed that shall be done;

Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,1
Telling a tale not too importunate

To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.

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Folk say, a wizard to a northern king At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,

That through one window men beheld the spring,

And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day. 35

So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;

1 According to Greek legend, false dreams come through the gate of ivory, true dreams through the gate of horn.

bale2 on high,

The oak and the ash together, and thereon shall the Mighty lie;

* The Volsunga Saga is an older, Norse version of the legend which appears in German literature as the Nibelungenlied, and which has been made familiar in modern times by Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. It is the great Teutonic race epic. Sigurd (Siegfried, in the German version) is the grandson of Volsung, who was a descendant of Odin. Brynhild was originally a Valkyrie, one of Odin's "Choosers of the Slain," maidens who rode on white cloud-horses and visited battle-fields to select heroes for Odin's great hall, Valhalla. Sigurd wakened Brynhild from an enchanted sleep to the doom of mortal life and love, and they plighted troth. But their love was thwarted at the court of the Niblung princes, Gunnar, Hogni, and Guttorm, and their sister Gudrun, the children of Giuki. Through the witchcraft of Grimhild, Gudrun's mother, Sigurd is made to lose all memory of Brynhild and to marry Gudrun. Moreover, he is made to assist in bringing about the marriage of Brynhild to Gunnar. Later, as a result of rivalry, Guttorm surprises and slays Sigurd, but is himself slain by Sigurd's sword, the "Wrath." Then follows the portion of the tale here given-the pathetic story of the means taken by Brynhild to rejoin Sigurd. Morris's metrical rendering of the entire legend extends to about ten thousand lines. 2 funeral pile

of untold price:

'O woe

of the mighty horn From the topmost tower out-wailing o'er the woeful world are borne.

But Brynhild lay in her chamber, and her women went and came,

And they feared and trembled before her, and none spake Sigurd's name;

10

But whiles they deemed her weeping, and whiles they deemed indeed

That she spake, if they might but hearken, but no words their ears might heed;

Till at last she spake out clearly: "I know not what ye would;

For ye come and go in my chamber, and ye seem of wavering mood

To thrust me on, or to stay me; to help my heart in woe,

Or to bid my days of sorrow midst nameless folly go.

None answered the word of Brynhild, none knew of her intent;

But she spake: "Bid hither Gunnar, lest the sun sink o'er the bent,+

And leave the words unspoken I yet have will to speak."'

Then her maidens go from before her, and that lord of war they seek,

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And he stands by the bed of Brynhild and strives to entreat and beseech,

But her eyes gaze awfully on him, and his lips may learn no speech.

And she saith: "I slept in the morning, or I dreamed in the waking-hour,

And my dream was of thee, O Gunnar, and the bed in thy kingly bower,

And the house that I blessed in my sorrow, and cursed in my sorrow and shame,

The gates of an ancient people, the towers of a mighty name;

King, cold was the hall I have dwelt in, and no brand burned on the hearth;

Dead-cold was thy bed, O Gunnar, and thy land was parched with dearth:

Sorrow of Odin the Goth! '7

Then I saw the halls of the strangers, and the hills, and the dark-blue sea,

Nor knew of their names and their nations, for earth was afar from me,

But brother rose up against brother, and blood swam over the board,

And women smote and spared not, and the fire was master and lord.

Then, then was the moonless mid-mirk, and I woke to the day and the deed

The deed that earth shall name not, the day of its bitterest need.

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Many words have I said in my life-days, and little more shall I say;

Ye have heard the dream of a woman, deal with it as ye may;

For meseems the world-ways sunder, and the dusk and the dark is mine,

Till I come to the hall of Freyia,s where the deeds of the Mighty shall shine.''

So hearkened Gunnar the Niblung, that her words he understood,

And But he said: "I have hearkened, and heeded thy death and mine in thy words:

he knew she was set on the death-stroke, and he deemed it nothing good;

I have done the deed and abide it, and my face shall laugh on the swords;

But thee, woman, I bid thee abide here till thy grief of soul abate;

Meseems nought lowly nor shameful shall be the Niblung fate;

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And here shalt thou rule and be mighty, and be Queen of the measureless Gold,9

And abase the Kings and upraise them; and anew shall thy fame be told, And as fair shall thy glory blossom as the fresh fields under the spring."'

Then he casteth his arms about her, and hot is the heart of the King

For the glory of Queen Brynhild and the hope of her days of gain,

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began to overtake them.

7 The sorrows of the race of Odin.

9 The hoard of the Niblungs, the won from Dwarfs, or smiths who dwelt in the caverns of the earth. The curse attached to this treas ure brought sorrow on all who shared in it.

All goods of men desired, now strew them on the floor,

That ye bear me forth to Sigurd, and the hand my hand would seek;

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They brought them 'mid their weeping, but none put forth a hand

To take that wealth desired, the spoils of many a land:

There they stand and weep before her, and some are moved to speech,

And they cast their arms about her and strive with her and beseech

That she look on her loved-ones' sorrow and the glory of the day.

It was nought; she scarce might see them, and she put their hands away,

And she said: "Peace, ye that love me! and take the gifts and the gold

In remembrance of my fathers and the faithful deeds of old."

Then she spake: "Where now is Gunnar, that I may speak with him? For new things are mine eyes beholding and the Niblung house grows dim,

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And new sounds gather about me, that may hinder me to speak

When the breath is near to flitting, and the voice is waxen weak."

Then upright by the bed of the Niblungs for a moment doth she stand, And the blade flasheth bright in the chamber, but no more they hinder her hand Than if a god were smiting to rend the world in two;

Then dulled are the glittering edges, and the

bitter point cleaves through

The breast of the all-wise Brynhild, and her feet from the pavement fail, And the sigh of her heart is hearkened 'mid the hush of the maidens' wail.

Chill, deep is the fear upon them, but they

bring her aback to the bed,

fuli wide on the plain,

But ere ye leave us sleeping draw his Wrath from out the sheath,

And lay that Light of the Branstock* and the blade that frighted death

Betwixt my side and Sigurd's, as it lay that while agone,

When once in one bed together we twain were laid alone:

How then when the flames flare upward may I be left behind?

How then may the road he wendeth be hard for my feet to find?

How then in the gates of Valhall may the door of the gleaming ring Clash to on the heel of Sigurd, as I follow on my King?''

Then she raised herself on her elbow, but again her eyelids sank,

And the wound by the sword-edge whispered, as her heart from the iron shrank,

150

And she moaned: "O lives of man-folk, for unrest all overlong

By the Father were ye fashioned; and what Now at last, O my beloved, all is gone; none hope amendeth wrong?

else is near,

Through the ages of all ages, never sundered, shall we wear.

Searce more than a sigh was the word, as back on the bed she fell,

Nor was there need in the chamber of the passing of Brynhild to tell;

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Then there cometh a cry from withoutward,

and Gunnar's hurrying feet

stock was a great oak tree about which was built the ancestral home of the Volsungs. The sword, sent by Odin, was drawn from the Branstock by Sigurd's father. It was later broken into pieces, but reforged as Bram, or the Wrath of Sigurd.