Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/169

The golden-crested cock shall sound alarm,
And his black brother-bird from hence reply,
And bucklers clash, and spears begin to pour,—
Longing will stir within my breast, though vain.
But not to me so grievous as, I know,
To other gods it were, is my enforced
Absence from fields where I could nothing aid;
For I am long since weary of your storm
Of carnage, and find, Hermod, in your life
Something too much of war and broils, which make
Life one perpetual fight, a bath of blood.
Mine eyes are dizzy with the arrowy hail;
Mine ears are stunned with blows, and sick for calm.
Inactive therefore let me lie, in gloom,
Unarmed, inglorious: I attend the course
Of ages, and my late return to light,
In times less alien to a spirit mild,
In new-recovered seats, the happier day."
He spake, and the fleet Hermod thus replied:—
"Brother, what seats are these, what happier day?
Tell me, that I may ponder it when gone."
And the ray-crownèd Balder answered him,—
"Far to the south, beyond the blue, there spreads
Another heaven, the boundless. No one yet
Hath reached it. There hereafter shall arise
The second Asgard, with another name.
Thither, when o'er this present earth and heavens
The tempest of the latter days hath swept,
And they from sight have disappeared and sunk,
Shall a small remnant of the gods repair;
Hoder and I shall join them from the grave.
There re-assembling we shall see emerge
From the bright ocean at our feet an earth

More fresh, more verdant than the last, with fruits