The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-07-05

The land was pale with famine
And rscked with fever pain:
The frozen fords were fshless.
The earth withheld her grain.
Men saw the boding Fylgia
Before them come and go.
And through their dreams, the Urdarmoon
From west to east sailed slow
Jarl Thorkell of Thevera
At Yule. time made his vow;
On Rykdall's holy Doomstone
He slew to Frey his cow.
To bounteous Frey he slew her;
To Skuld, the younger Morn,
Who watches over birth aud death,
He gave her calf unborn.
And his little gold.haired daughter
Took up the sprinkling rod,
And smeared with blood the temple
And the wide lips of the god.
Hoarse below, the winter water
Ground its ice-blocks DER and DER,
Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,
Rose and fell along the shore.
The red torch Of the Jokul,
Aloft in icy space
Shone down on the bloody Horg.stones
And the statues carven face.
And closer round and grimmer
Beneath its bsleful light
The Jotun shapes OF mountains
Came crowding through the night.
The gray haired Hersir trembed
As flame by wind is blown;
A weird power moved his white lips,
And their voice was not his own.
81 The Esir thirst 4" he mHttered;
" The gods must have more blood
Before the tun shall blossom
Or fish shall fill the food.
Z" The Esir thirst and hunger,
And hence our blight and ban;
The mouths of the strong gods water
For the flesh and blood of man
Whom shall we give TO Asgard?
Not warriors, sword on thigh;
But let the nursing infant
And bedrid old man die"
$50 be it," cried the young men,
There needs nor doubt nor parle;"
But, knitting hard his red brows,
In silence stood the Jarl.
A sound of woman's weeping
At the temple door was heard;
But the old men bowed their white heads,
And answered not word0
Then the dream-wife of Thingvalla,
A Vals young and fair,
Sang softly, stirring with her breath
The vail of her loose hair.
She sang: "The winds from Alfheim
Rrino never sound of strife:
The gifts for Frey the meetest
Are not Of death, but life.
He loves the grass green meadows,
The grazing kine's sweet breath;
He loaths your bloody Horg-stOnes,
Your gifts that smell OF death.
"No wrong by wrong is righted,
No pain is cured by pain;
The blood that smokes from Doom.rings
Falls back in redder rain.
"The gods are what you make them,
As earth shall Asgard prove;
And hate will come of hating,
And love will come OF love.
"Mske dole of skyr and black bread,
That old and young may live;
And look to Frey for favor
When first like Frey you give.
Even now DER Njord's sea-madows
The simmer dawn begins
The tun shall have its harvest,
The ford its glancing fms"
Then up swore Jarl Thorken:
by Gimli and by Hell,
o Vala of Thingvalls,
Thou singest wise and well
&" Too dear the Esir's favors,
Bought with our children's lives;
Better die than shame 10 living
Our mothers and our wives.
The full shall give his portion
To him who hath most need;
OF cHrdled skyr and black bread,
Be daily dole decreed."
He broke from bis neck-ehsin
Three links of beaten gold;
And each man, at his bidding.
Brought gifts for young and old.
Then mothers nursed their children,
And daughters fed their sires,
And Health sat down with Plenty
Before the next Yule fires.
The Horg.stones stand in Rykdal;
The DOom.ring still remains
But the SHOWS Of thousand winters
Have washed away the stains.
Christ ruleth now the Rsir
Have found their twilight dim;
And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
The Vala sang OF Him