THE nights are brooding long and black;
The Seven Stars glimmer pale.
Winds rush from the gates of the zodiac,
The pine tree snaps in the cold gale.

In the sacred grove the tempest rages
Among the moss-grown gods of the ages.
'Valhal is past;
We sink at last!'
It throws to the ground stained altar stones
And crushes the sacrificial bones.

The heap of Gothic masonry lowers
Brown in the moon's uncertain glance;
In dark blue air rise strutting towers,
And round the walls lean shadows dance.

A wisp of light spreads ghostly fingers
Through painted glass to the Cross, and lingers.
'They are sacrificed,
Thou white Christ!
Thy crown of thorns shall drive them forth
From the windswept mountains of the North.'

Olaf Trygvason lands with his vassals.
They sing the mass on Norway's strand;
From gloomy southern castles
He brings his monks to the mountain land.

The Christian faith invades the region,
But Hakon leads his peasant legion
To fight and bleed
For the old creed.
They meet the King, but the ancient faith
Goes down in the sunset flame of death.

The cock crows loud through the midnight glade.
Earl Hakon slays his son,
Draws from his body the smoking blade,
And prays in the grove to the Pallid One.

'Christ, let the radiant gods still live!
My heart raves ! what more can I give?
Go back again
To thy southern plain!'
But the owl flutters on the breast of the Norn;
It shrieks, and the mountain echoes mourn.

Christian banners seethe in the air;
They flash, they flash through the land.
The heartening horns of the Christians blare;
Luck moves with Olaf hand in hand.

The Saviour is carried before him proudly,
Psalms and litanies sound loudly;
With cross-shaped sword
He leads the horde.
Victorious rumours clear his path;
Hakon flies in lonely wrath.

He spurs his whinnying horse; at the river
Gaul it stops, spattered with foam.
'Let the Norwegian cowards shiver;
I never betray my ancient home.'

Weeping, he kills his horse, and stains
His coat with the blood from the gushing veins.
'You will think it is I
That bleed and die,
But, Olaf, I still have men for war,
And on my side fight Tyr and Thor.'

His eyes flash with a fierce despair.
He flies to the mountains' pine-roofed halls,
And hides in a shadowy cavern there
With Thormod Karker, one of his thralls.

A splinter of pine casts smoky light
Where the two sit silent in the night.
Distrustful, both,
Of the spoken oath.
The thrall's eyes stare at the earl, aghast,
But midnight comes, and he sleeps at last.

Then a rustle runs through the cave's dark length.
Hermod appears to the scowling earl.
'The gods have put their faith in thy strength,
Bane on Olaf, the Christian churl !

Fair Freia weeps, her gold tears fall.
Shall a southern crucified criminal
Be overlord?
Go, swing your sword !
Pour Olaf's blood in every shrine,
And a seat in Valhal shall be thine !'

The red shade wanes away in space.
Just then the thrall wakes with a scream :
'Jesus showed me, with smiling face,
Your body drenched in a bloody stream.'

'What! craven slave ! do you fear Thor's thunder?
You are grey as the sky when the sun goes under.
Dare you betray
Your master?' 'Nay.'
The thrall's heart cringes, terror-frosted,
(The earl sinks down in sleep, exhausted.

He dreams, strangely smiling and sighing.
Karker gazes as though bewitched.
'Why did I see his body lying
In blood? and why is his right brow twitched?

He is, after all, a robber, a blot
On Norway's fame. I could! . . . why not?
When Olaf is told
He will give me gold.'
He pauses, trembles, then Hakon's life
Spurts from the gullet under the knife.

Loudly the horns from the hills come pealing.
'Here he is ! At last we have found him !'
Like a racing river rushing and reeling
Olaf bursts in with his vassals round him.

The thrall is felled with their battle-axes.
Olaf sees Hakon; his face relaxes
In smile to see
The dead enemy.
'Vengeance ! the master heathen is slain,
And the veil of darkness rent in twain.'

It rumbles across the horizoned heaven;
The ocean trembles, the sound goes forth
That the radiant gods of old are driven
Away, and will never return to the North.

Eternally, nothing but cloisters and churches ;
Gone are the groves, but he that searches
May sometimes behold
In the lonely wold
An upright stone with a hero's mark
Still touched with the flames long quenched in dark.