All thy pleasures, all thy sweets!
They are cheats,—

Thorns below, and flowers above!
Ah, Love!

Perjured, false, treacherous Love:

BEOWULF'S EXPEDITION TO HEORT.

FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON.

THUS then, much care-worn,

The son of Healfden

Sorrowed evermore,

Ner might the prudent hero
His woes avert.

The war was too hard,
Too loath and longsome,
That on the people came,
Dire wrath and grim,
Of night-woes the worst.
This from home heard
Higelac's Thane,

Good among the Goths,
Grendel's deeds.
He was of mankind
In might the strongest,
At that day
Of this life,

Noble and stalwart.
He bade him a sea-ship,
A goodly one, prepare.
Quoth he, the war-king,
Over the swan's road,
Seek he would

The mighty monarch,
Since he wanted men.
For him that journey
His prudent fellows
Straight made ready,
Those that loved him.
They excited their souls,
The omen they behold.
Had the good-man
Of the Gothic people
Champions chosen,
Of those that keenest

He might find,
Some fifteen men.

The sea-wood sought he,
The warrior showed,

Sea-crafty man!

The landmarks,
And first went forth.

The ship was on the waves,
Boat under the cliffs.
The barons ready

To the prow mounted.
The streams they whirled
The sea against the sands.
The chieftains bore
On the naked breast
Bright ornaments,
War-gear, Goth-like.

The men shoved off,

Men on their willing way,

The bounden wood.

Then went over the sea-waves,

Hurried by the wind,

The ship with foamy neck,

Most like a sea-fowl,

Till about one hour
Of the second day
The curved prow
Had passed onward
So that the sailors
The land saw,

The shore-cliffs shining,
Mountains steep,
And broad sea-noses.
Then was the sea-sailing
Of the earl at an end.
Then up speedily
The Weather people
On the land went,

The sea-bark moored,

Their mail-sarks shook,

Their war-weeds.

God thanked they,

That to them the sea-journey

Easy had been.

Then from the wall beheld The warden of the Scyldings, He who the sea-cliffs

Had in his keeping,

Bear o'er the balks

The bright shields,

The war-weapons speedily.
Him the doubt disturbed

In his mind's thought,

What these men might be.

Went then to the shore,
On his steed riding,
The Thane of Hrothgar.
Before the host he shook
His warden's staff in hand,
In measured words demanded
"What men are ye
War-gear wearing,

Host in harness,

Who thus the brown keel

Over the water-street

Leading come

Hither over the sea?

I these boundaries

As shore-warden hold;

That in the Land of the Danes

Nothing loathsome

With a ship-crew
Scathe us might..
Ne'er saw I mightier
Earl upon earth
Than is your own,
Hero in harness.

Not seldom this warrior

Is in weapons distinguished;
Never his beauty belies him,
His peerless countenance!
Now would I fain

Your origin know,

Ere ye

forth

As false spies

Into the Land of the Danes

Farther fare.

Now, ye dwellers afar off!

Ye sailors of the sea!

Listen to my

One-fold thought.

Quickest is best

To make known

Whence your coming may be."

THE SOUL'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE BODY.

FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON.

MUCH it behoveth

Each one of mortals,

That he his soul's journey

In himself ponder,
How deep it may be.

When Death cometh,
The bonds he breaketh
By which united
Were body and soul.

Long it is thenceforth
Ere the soul taketh
From God himself
Its woe or its weal;
As in the world erst,
Even in its earth-vessel,
It wrought before.

The soul shall come
Wailing with loud voice,
After a sennight,
The soul, to find
The body

That it erst dwelt in ;--
Three hundred winters,

Unless ere that worketh

The eternal Lord,
The Almighty God,

The end of the world.

Crieth then, so care-worn,

With cold utterance,

And speaketh grimly,

The ghost to the dust:

"Dry dust! thou dreary one!

How little didst thou labour for me!

In the foulness of earth

Thou all wearest away

Like to the loam!

Little didst thou think
How thy soul's journey
Would be thereafter,
When from the body
It should be led forth."

SONG.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

Ir thou art sleeping, maiden,

Awake, and open thy door:

'Tis the break of day, and we must away,

O'er meadow, and mount, and moor.

Wait not to find thy slippers,

But come with thy naked feet:

We shall have to pass through the dewy grass, And waters wide and fleet.

FRITHIOF'S HOMESTEAD.

FROM THE SWEDISH.

THREE miles extended around the fields of the homestead; on

three sides

Valleys, and mountains, and hills, but on the fourth side was

the ocean.

Birch-woods crowned the summits, but over the down-sloping

hill-sides

Flourished the golden corn, and man-high was waving the rye-field. Lakes, full many in number, their mirror held up for the mountains, Held for the forests up, in whose depths the high-antlered reindeers Had their kingly walk, and drank of a hundred brooklets.

But in the valleys, full widely around, there fed on the greensward Herds with sleek, shining sides, and udders that longed for the milk-pail.

'Mid these were scattered, now here and now there, a vast countless number

Of white-woolled sheep, as thou seest the white-looking stray clouds, Flock-wise, spread o'er the heavenly vault, when it bloweth in spring-time.

Twice twelve swift-footed coursers, mettlesome, fast-fettered storm-winds,

Stamping stood in the line of stalls, all champing their fodder, Knotted with red their manes, and their hoofs all whitened with steel shoes.

The banquet-hall, a house by itself, was timbered of hard fir.
Not five hundred men (at ten times twelve to the hundred)
Filled up the roomy hall, when assembled for drinking at Yule-tide.
Thorough the hall, as long as it was, went a table of holm-oak,
Polished and white, as of steel; the columns twain of the high-seat
Stood at the end thereof, two gods carved out of an elm-tree;
Odin with lordly look, and Frey with the sun on his frontlet.
Lately between the two, on a bear-skin (the skin it was coal-black,
Scarlet-red was the throat, but the paws were shodden with silver).
Thorsten sat with his friends, Hospitality sitting with Gladness.
Oft, when the moon among the night-clouds fiew, related the old man
Wonders from far distant lands he had seen, and cruises of Vikings
Far on the Baltic and Sea of the West, and the North Sea.
Hush sat the listening bench, and their glances hung on the
graybeard's

Lips, as a bee on the rose; but the Skald was thinking of Bragé,
Where, with silver beard, and runes on his tongue, he is seated
Under the leafy beech, and tells a tradition by Mimer's
Ever-n urmuring wave, himself a living tradition.

Mid-way the floor (with thatch was it strewn), burned for ever the fire-flame

Glad on its stone-built hearth; and through the wide-mouthed smoke-flue