# Thorgerda

a poem, the subject of which, Thorgerda, is a woman who threatens to commit suicide in the Egils Saga
    LO, what a golden day it is!
       The glad sun rives the sapphire deeps
    Down to the dim pearl-floor’d abyss
       Where, cold in death, my lover sleeps;
    Crowns with soft fire his sea-drench’d hair,
       Kisses with gold his lips death-pale,
    Lets down from heaven a golden stair,
       Whose steps methinks his soul doth scale.
    This is my treasure. White and sweet,
       He lies beneath my ardent eyne,
    With heart that nevermore shall beat,
       Nor lips press softly against mine.
    How like a dream it seems to me,
       The time when hand in hand we went
    By hill and valley, I and he,
       Lost in a trance of ravishment!
    I and my lover here that lies
       And sleeps the everlasting sleep,
    We walk’d whilere in Paradise;
       (Can it be true?) Our souls drank deep
    Together of Love’s wonder-wine:
       We saw the golden days go by,
    Unheeding, for we were divine;
       Love had advanced us to the sky.
    And of that time no traces bin,
       Save the still shape that once did hold
    My lover’s soul, that shone therein,
       As wine laughs in a vase of gold.
    Cold, cold he lies, and answers not
       Unto my speech; his mouth is cold
    Whose kiss to mine was sweet and hot
       As sunshine to a marigold.
    And yet his pallid lips I press;
       I fold his neck in my embrace;
    I rain down kisses none the less
       Upon his unresponsive face:
    I call on him with all the fair
       Flower-names that blossom out of love;
    I knit sea-jewels in his hair;
       I weave fair coronals above
    The cold, sweet silver of his brow:
       For this is all of him I have;
    Nor any Future more than now
       Shall give me back what Love once gave.
    For from Death’s gate our lives divide;
       His was the Galilean’s faith:
    With those that serve the Crucified,
       He shar’d the chance of Life and Death.
    And so my eyes shall never light
       Upon his star-soft eyes again;
    Nor ever in the day or night,
       By hill or valley, wood or plain,
    Our hands shall meet afresh. His voice
       Shall never with its silver tone
    The sadness of my soul rejoice,
       Nor his breast throb against my own.
    His sight shall never unto me
       Return whilst heaven and earth remain:
    Though Time blend with Eternity,
       Our lives shall never meet again,—
    Never by gray or purple sea,
       Never again in heavens of blue,
    Never in this old earth—ah me!
       Never, ah never! in the new.
    For me, he treads the windless ways
       Among the thick star-diamonds,
    Where in the middle æther blaze
       The Golden City’s pearl gate-fronds;
    Sitteth, palm-crown’d and silver-shod,
       Where in strange dwellings of the skies
    The Christians to their Woman-God
       Cease nevermore from psalmodies.
    And I, I wait, with haggard eyes
       And face grown awful for desire,
    The coming of that fierce day’s rise
       When from the cities of the fire
    The Wolf shall come with blazing crest,
       And many a giant arm’d for war;
    When from the sanguine-streaming West,
       Hell-flaming, speedeth Naglfar.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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