Balder.  Aye; when the tree’s discover’d.

Thor.  Well, now, attend and heed a father’s warning! 
When Odin high from Lidskialf saw thee raving,
In toils of love, ’mong Norway’s snowy mountains,
The speech of Mimmer on his heart fell heavy. 
Hear it and tremble!  Not for death, O Balder! 
Nor e’en for Haela, but thy father’s anguish;
“The year”—­such was his word (thou knowest Mimmer,
And scarce canst think he’d breathe the words of falsehood)—­
“The year when Norway’s desert hills shall echo
The half-god’s wasted love-caus’d lamentations,
When he’s rejected by a prophet’s daughter,
That year shall see the spear which holds his ruin,
Shall see the gods in grief, and Odin weeping.” 
Hear that and quake!  And fly, and spare thy father! 
If not, dote on and die, for that’s thy fortune!

[He disappears among the trees.

Balder (alone).  And must I die?  Ah well, I merely forfeit
A worthless breath, which is by Nanna hated. 
Ha! hated.  How that thought that Nanna hates me
Torments my breast!  Death, only death, can drown it. 
It burns, it scorches me, like Nastroud’s blazes. 
Come, tenfold death, come quickly, and extinguish
The thought:  destroy it, crush it, with this bosom. 
Thanks be to Thor, for he my eyelids lifted,
Disclosing I had chance of rest—­of dying! 
E’en Surtur, he whose hostile fingers planted
The tree, the black tree, by the feeble starlight;
Who nurs’d its infant root with blood fresh taken
From slaughter’d babes, and drew a circle round it,
And mutter’d magic words, and gave it power
To shoot the bane of Nastroud in my bosom,
Was not so cruel as thyself, O Nanna! 
What! cruel?  No, by Odin!  Pity drove him
To rear up remedy benign and grateful
For the dire wound with which thou torment’st me. 
Ah, maid! thou mak’st me look to death with longing
And yet to die! and die from thee! and never—­
Ha! my heart freezes!  The mere word would kill me! 
But then, most likely thou wilt pity Balder,
And with a hot, a precious tear bedew him!

   Say, O maid! when thou dost pour
   From thine eyes the briny shower
   O’er a lifeless lump of clay! 
   Cease thy weeping, cruel maiden: 
   All thy grief is vainly vented: 
   See the breast so long tormented
   Which thy pity now should gladden,
   Beats no more and rots away! 
   O Nanna!  Nanna!

[He sits down and holds both his hands before his eyes.

Loke (in the shape of an old Finman).  Balder!

[He walks in a crooked attitude, and supports himself upon a knotted staff.  He enters so that his back is turned to Balder.

Help, ye gods of heaven! 
Oh, I unfortunate! that frost and hunger,
And fear of bears and wolves and evil spirits
Should now destroy me on these frightful mountains! 
Oh, that I but beheld a smoke uprising,
A single trace of a bewildered hunter! 
That I but heard a cheery horn resounding! 
But nothing, nothing!  Never, never rises
A friendly sound among these wildernesses,
Which human feet till now has never trodden. 
Ah! who will succour me?