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A phantom, pale and bleeding rose,
Ever as he sought repose:
Ghastly visions round him prest,
And fear'd his midnight hours of rest.
The Giants croud each sacred fane,
Where Goddesses presageful reign,
famous sorceress who lay buried there, by name Volva, to know if fate did indeed require that Balder should die. In the mean time the Gods divert themselves in a grand assembly, and Balder stood as a mark at which they threw darts and stones. But nothing injured him on account of the oath, by which every thing was rendered harmless. Lok personating an old woman, learnt from Frigga, that no oath was exacted from the Misseltoe because it appeared young and feeble. Lok then returned to the sports, and pursuaded Hoder who was blind, to throw a branch of Misseltoe at Balder, which pierced him through and killed him.
It would not perhaps be refining too much upon this circumstance, to explain it as an Allegory; or to suppose that the disturbance wrought among the Gods by the Misseltoe, was meant to express the opposition which Odin’s religion found from the Druids of the Celtic Nations.
