HOW THE MEAD-SLAVE WAS SET FREE

Nay, move not! Sit just as you are,

Under the carved wings of the chair.

The hearth-glow sifting through your hair

Turns every dim pearl to a star

Dawn-drowned in floods of brightening air.

I have been thinking of that night

When all the wide hall burst to blaze

With spears caught up, thrust fifty ways

To find my throat, while I lay white

And sick with joy, to think the days

I dragged out in your hateful North —

A slave, constrained at banquet's need

To fill the black bull's horns with mead

For drunken sea-thieves — were henceforth

Cast from me as a poison weed,

While Death thrust roses in my hands!

But you, who knew the flowers he had

Were no such roses ripe and glad

As nod in my far southern lands,

But pallid things to make men sad,

Put back the spears with one calm hand,

Raised on your knee my wondering head,

Wiped off the trickling drops of red

From my torn forehead with a strand

Of your bright loosened hair, and said:

“Sea-rovers! would you kill a skald?

This boy has hearkened Odin sing

Unto the clang and winnowing

Of raven's wings. His heart is thralled

To music, as to some strong king;

“And this great thraldom works disdain

Of lesser serving. Once release

These bonds he bears, and he may please

To give you guerdon sweet as rain

To sailors calmed in thirsty seas.”

Then, having soothed their rage to rest,

You led me to old Skagi's throne,

Where yellow gold rims in the stone;

And in my arms, against my breast,

Thrust his great harp of walrus bone.

How they came crowding, tunes on tunes!

How good it was to touch the strings

And feel them thrill like happy things

That flutter from the gray cocoons

On hedge rows, in your gradual springs!

All grew a blur before my sight,

As when the stealthy white fog slips

At noonday on the staggering ships;

I saw one single spot of light,

Your white face, with its eager lips —

And so I sang to that. O thou

Who liftedst me from out my shame!

Wert thou content when Skagi came,

Put his own chaplet on my brow,

And bent and kissed his own harp-frame?