Saga of the North: Lyric Interlude of Hunters -

Lyric Interlude of Hunters

Sliding from a lit world high in silver rainlands,
Glides a mournful river down a heather valley,
Making secret music to the reeking heights.
Dew is on the bracken, drenching web-hung spiders.
Mist will fall and coldly on the face turned upward
To behold that valley climbing into mountains
Terraced by the cloud-racks streaming from the barrows,
Shimmering with sun-bolts haloed on the hills.

Hark! The voice of the river is broken!

Standing in the swift ford, titanic in the mist-light,
Loom the palm-spread antlers of a rutting elk.
Last of all his proud race, last of ancient monsters,
Hazel-eyed, musk-stinking, water cups and gurgles
Cooling to the pipe-veins of his huge-thewed limbs.
And his voice goes tolling through the heather foot-hills,
Calling like the trumpet of a dying sun-god
Lost in dayless mountains on a darkened star.

But who are these sneaking through the black oaks? —

Golden-torqued, and hairy of the nose and armpit,
Coursing with their wolfhounds longer than the dawn-light,
Bounding in a great arc, swifter than a spear —
Whitely flash the jav'lins, darkly swish the arrows,
Till the black tossed antlers like a cloud at sunset
Redden in the storm-froth of the bloody ford.
Mounds of tearing wolfhounds yammer in the water
Like the fiend-dogs' welcome to the souls of hell.

Whips! Whips! Whips! Cut the shaggy throat!

There he lies, eyes glazing, with a red tongue lolling,
Branched and like a thunder-tree the lightning kills.
Blow you kilted chieftains, blow upon your bronze horns,
Howl you brachs and wolfhounds, at the noise of bugles,
Rolling like a coronach through the misty hills —
Blow, chiefs, blow! Swell your cheeks and blue veins,
For the past is conquered and the beasts are dead.