And Loki, the World’s Begrudger, who maketh all labour vain,
    And Haenir, the Utter-Blameless, who wrought the hope of man,
    And his heart and inmost yearnings, when first the work began;—­
    —­The God that was aforetime, and hereafter yet shall be,
    When the new light yet undreamed of shall shine o’er earth and sea.

    “Thus about the world they wended and deemed it fair and good,
    And they loved their life-days dearly:  so came they to the wood,
    And the lea without a shepherd and the dwellings of the deer,
    And unto a mighty water that ran from a fathomless mere. 
    Now that flood my brother Otter had haunted many a day
    For its plenteous fruit of fishes; and there on the bank he lay
    As the Gods came wandering thither; and he slept, and in his dreams
    He saw the downlong river, and its fishy-peopled streams,
    And the swift smooth heads of its forces, and its swirling wells and
      deep,
    Where hang the poised fishes, and their watch in the rock-halls keep. 
    And so, as he thought of it all, and its deeds and its wanderings,
    Whereby it ran to the sea down the road of scaly things,
    His body was changed with his thought, as yet was the wont of our kind,
    And he grew but an Otter indeed; and his eyes were sleeping and blind
    The while he devoured the prey, a golden red-flecked trout. 
    Then passed by Odin and Haenir, nor cumbered their souls with doubt;
    But Loki lingered a little, and guile in his heart arose,
    And he saw through the shape of the Otter, and beheld a chief of his
      foes,
    A king of the free and the careless:  so he called up his baleful might,
    And gathered his godhead together, and tore a shard outright
    From the rock-wall of the river, and across its green wells cast;
    And roaring over the waters that bolt of evil passed,
    And smote my brother Otter that his heart’s life fled away,
    And bore his man’s shape with it, and beast-like there he lay,
    Stark dead on the sun-lit blossoms:  but the Evil God rejoiced,
    And because of the sound of his singing the wild grew many-voiced.

    “Then the three Gods waded the river, and no word Haenir spake,
    For his thoughts were set on God-home, and the day that is ever awake. 
    But Odin laughed in his wrath, and murmured:  ’Ah, how long,
    Till the iron shall ring on the anvil for the shackles of thy wrong!’

    “Then Loki takes up the quarry, and is e’en as a man again;
    And the three wend on through the wild-wood till they come to a
      grassy plain
    Beneath the untrodden mountains; and lo a noble house,
    And a hall with great craft fashioned, and made full glorious;
    But night on the earth was falling; so scantly might they see
    The wealth of its smooth-wrought stonework and its world of imagery: