Canto X

Lo, two figures, wild and sullen, Gliding, sliding on all fours, Break a path at dead of night Through a wood of gloomy pines.

It is Atta Troll the Sire, One-Ear too, his youngest son, And they halt within a clearing By a stone of bloody rites.

"This same stone," growled Atta Troll, "Is a shrine where Druids once Slaughtered wretched human wights In dark Superstition's days.

"Oh! what frightful horrors these! When I think of them, my fur Lifts along my back! To praise God they drenched the soil in blood!

"Certes, men have now become More enlightened. Now no more Do they slaughter in their zeal For celestial interests.

"'Tis no longer holy rage, Ecstasy nor madness sheer, But self-love alone that urges Them to slaughter and to crime.

"Now for worldly goods they strive, Day by day and year by year. It is one eternal war; Each goes robbing for himself.

"When the common goods of all Fall into the hands of one, Straight of Rights of Property He will prate and Ownership.

"Property! Just Ownership? Property is theft! O lies! Craft and folly!--such a mixture Man alone would dare invent.

"Never yet did Nature make Properties, for pocketless We are born into the world-- Who hath pockets in his pelt?

"None of us was ever born With such little sacks devised In our outer hides and skins To enable us to steal!

"Only man, that creature smooth Who in alien wool is garbed Artfully, in artful wise Made himself such pockets too.

"Pockets! as unnatural As is property itself, Or that law of have-and-hold. Men are only pocket-thieves!

"Flamingly I hate them! Thee All my hatred I bequeath. Oh, my son, upon this shrine Shalt thou swear eternal hate!

"Be the mortal foeman thou Of th' oppressor, unforgiving To thy very end of days! Swear it--swear it here, my son!"

And the youngster swore as once Hannibal. The moonbeams bleak Yellowed on the bloodstone hoary And that brace of misanthropes.

Later shall our harp record How the young bear kept his faith And his plighted oath,--for him Shall our epic strings be strung.

With regard to Atta Troll, Let us leave him for a space, So we may the surer smite Him with our unerring ball.

Traitor to Humanity! Thou art judged, the sentence writ. Of lèse-majesté thou'rt guilty, And to-morrow sees the chase.