IV.

The King return'd from out the wild,

He bore but little game in hand;

The mother said 'They have taken the child -To spill his blood and heal the land:

The land is sick, the people diseased,

And blight and famine on all the lea:

The holy Gods, they must be appeased,
So I pray you tell the truth to me.

They have taken our son,

The King bent low, with hand on brow,

He stay'd his arms upon his knee :

'O wife, what use to answer now?

For now the Priest has judged for me.'

The King was shaken with holy fear;

"The Gods,' he said, 'would have chosen well;

Yet both are near, and both are dear,

And which the dearest I cannot tell!'

But the Priest was happy,

His victim won :

We have his dearest,

His only son!'

VI.

The rites prepared, the victim bared,

The knife uprising toward the blow,

To the altar-stone she sprang alone,

'Mc, not my darling, no!'

He caught her away with a sudden cry;
Suddenly from him brake his wife,

And shrieking 'I am his dearest, I—

I am his dearest !' rush'd on the knife.

And the Priest was happy,

'O, Father Odin,

We give you a life.

Which was his nearest ?

Who was his dearest?

The Gods have answer'd;

We give them the wife!'

WAGES.

GLORY of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless

sea

Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the

wrong

Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory

she:

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be

dust,

Would she have heart to endure for the life of

the worm and the fly?

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the

just,

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer

sky:

Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.