KING SIGEBERT OF EAST ANGLIA, AND HEIDA THE PROPHETESS.

Long time upon the late-closed door the King Kept his eyes fixed. The wondrous guest was gone; Yet, seeing that his words were great and sage, Compassionate for the sorrowful state of man, Yet sparing not man's sin, their echoes lived Thrilling large chambers in the monarch's breast Silent for many a year. Exiled in France The mystery of the Faith had reached his ear In word but not in power. The westering sun Lengthened upon the palace floor its beam, Yet the strong hand which propped that thoughtful head Sank not, nor moved. Sudden, King Sigebert Arose and spake: 'I go to Heida's Tower: Await ye my return.' The woods ere long Around him closed. Upon the wintry boughs An iron shadow pressed; and as the wind Increased beneath their roofs, an iron sound Clangoured funereal. Down their gloomiest aisle, With snow flakes white, the monarch strode, till now Before him, and not distant, Heida's Tower, The Prophetess by all men feared yet loved, Smit by a cold beam from the yellowing west, Shone like a tower of brass. Her ravens twain Crested the turrets of its frowning gate, Unwatched by warder. Sigebert passed in: Beneath the stony vault the queenly Seer Sat on her ebon throne. With pallid lips The King rehearsed his tale; how one with brow Lordlier than man's, and visionary eyes Which, wander where they might, saw Spirits still, Had told him many marvels of some God Mightier than Odin thrice. He paused awhile: A warning shadow came to Heida's brow: Nathless she nothing spake. The King resumed: 'He spake—that stranger—of the things he saw: For he, his body tranced, it may be dead, In spirit oft hath walked the Spirit-Land: Thence, downward gazing, once he saw our earth, A little vale obscure, and, o'er it hung, Those four great Fires that desolate mankind: The Fire of Falsehood first; the Fire of Lust, Ravening for weeds and scum; the Fire of Hate, Hurling, on war-fields, brother-man 'gainst man; The Fire of tyrannous Pride. While yet he gazed, Behold, those Fires, widening, commixed, then soared Threatening the skies. A Spirit near him cried, "Fear nought; for breeze-like pass the flames o'er him In whom they won no mastery there below: But woe to those who, charioted therein, Rode forth triumphant o'er the necks of men, And had their day on earth. Proportioned flames Of other edge shall try their work and them!" Thus spake my guest: the frost wind smote his brows, While on that moonlit crag we sat, ice-cold, Yet down them, like the reaper's sweat at noon, The drops of anguish streamed. Till then, methinks, That thing Sin is I knew not. Calm of voice Again he spake. He told me of his God: That God, like Odin, is a God of War: Who serve Him wear His armour day and night: The maiden, nay, the child, must wield the sword; Yet none may hate his neighbour. Thus he spake, That Prophet from far regions: "Wherefore wreck Thy brother man? upon his innocent babes Drag down the ruinous roof? Seek manlier tasks! The death in battle is the easiest death: Be yours the daily dying; lifelong death; Death of the body that the soul may live:— War on the Spirits unnumbered and accurst Which, rulers of the darkness of this world, Drive, hour by hour, their lances through man's soul That wits not of the wounding!"' Heida turned A keen eye on the King: 'Whence came your guest? Not from those sun-bright southern shores, I ween?' He answered, 'Nay, from western isle remote That Prophet came.' Then Heida's countenance fell: 'The West! the West! it should have been the East! Conclude your tale: what saith your guest of God?' The King replied: 'His God so loved mankind That, God remaining, he became a man; So hated sin that, sin to slay, He died. One tear of His had paid the dreadful debt:— Not so He willed it: thus He willed, to wake In man, His lost one, quenchless hate of sin, Proportioned to the death-pang of a God; Nor chose He lonely majesty of death: 'Twixt sinners paired He died.' In Heida's eye Trembled a tear. 'A dream was mine in youth, When first the rose of girlhood warmed my cheek, A dream of some great Sacrifice that claimed Not praise—not praise—it only yearned to die Helping the Loved. A maid alone, I thought, Such sacrifice could offer.' As she spake, She pressed upon the pale cheek, warmed once more, Her cold, thin hand a moment. 'Maiden-born Was He, my guest revealed,' the King replied: 'Then from that Angel's "Hail," and her response, "So be it unto me," when sinless doubt Vanished in world-renewing, free consent, He told the tale;—the Infant in the crib; The shepherds o'er him bowed;' (with widening eyes Heida, bent forward, saw like them that Child) 'The Star that led the Magians from the East——' 'The East, the East! It should have been the East!' Once more she cried; 'our race is from the East: The Persian worshipped t'ward the rising sun: You said, but now, the West.' The King resumed: 'God's priest was from the West; but in the East The great Deliverer sprang.' Next, step by step, Like herald panting forth in leaguered town Tidings unhoped for of deliverance strange Through victory on some battle field remote, The King rehearsed his theme, from that first Word, 'The Woman's Seed shall bruise the Serpent's head,' Prime Gospel, ne'er forgotten in the East, To Calvary's Cross, the Resurrection morn, Lastly the great Ascension into heaven: And ever as he spake on Heida's cheek The red spot, deepening, spread; within her eyes An unastonished gladness waxed more large: Back to the marble woman came her youth: Once more within her heaving breast it lived, Once more upon her forehead shone, as when The after-glow returns to Alpine snows Left death-like by dead day. Question at times She made, yet seemed the answer to foreknow. That tale complete, low-toned at last she spake: 'Unhappy they to whom these things are hard!' Then silent sat, and by degrees became Once more that dreaded prophet, stern and cold. The silence deeper grew: the sun, not set, Had sunk beneath the forest's western ridge; And jagged shadows tinged that stony floor Whereon the monarch knelt. Slowly therefrom He raised his head; then slowly made demand: 'Is he apostate who discards old Faith?'

Long time in musings Heida sat, then spake: 'Yea, if that Faith discarded be the Truth: Not so, if it be falsehood. God is Truth; God-taught, true hearts discern that Truth, and guard: Whom God forsakes forsake it. O thou North, That beat'st thy brand so loud against thy shield, Hearing nought else, what Truth one day was thine! Behold within corruption's charnel vaults It sleeps this day. What God shall lift its head? We came from regions of the rising sun: Scorning the temples built by mortal hand, We worshipp'd God—one God—the Immense, All-Just: That worship was the worship of great hearts: Duty was worship then: that God received it: I know not if benignly He received; If God be Love I know not. This I know, God loves not priest that under roofs of gold Lifts, in his right hand held, the Sacrifice; The left, behind him, fingering for the dole. King of East Anglia's realm, the primal Truths Are vanished from our Faith: the ensanguined rite, The insane carouse survive!' Thus Heida spake, Heida, the strong one by the strong ones feared; Heida, the sad one by the mourners loved; Heida, the brooder on the sacred Past, The nursling of a Prophet House, the child Of old traditions sage! She paused, and then Milder, resumed: 'What moved thee to believe?' And Sigebert made answer thus: 'The Sword: For as a sword that Truth the stranger preached Ran down into my heart.' Heida to him, 'Well saidst thou "as a Sword:" a Sword is Truth;— As sharp a sword is Love: and many a time In youth, but not the earliest, happiest youth, When first I found that grief was in the world, Had learned how deep its root, an infant's wail Went through me like a sword. Man's cry it seemed, The blindfold, crownèd creature's cry for Truth, His spirit's sole deliverer.' Once again She mused, and then continued, 'Truth and Love Are gifts too great to give themselves for nought; Exacting Gods. Within man's bleeding heart, If e'er to man conceded, both shall lie Crossed, like two swords— Behold thine image, crowned Humanity! Better such dower than life exempt from woe: Our Fathers knew to suffer; joyed in pain; They knew not this—how deep its root!' Once more The Prophetess was mute: again she spake: 'How named thy guest his God?' The King replied: 'The Warrior God, Who comes to judge the world; The Lord of Love; the God Who wars on Sin, And ceases not to war.' 'Ay, militant,' Heida rejoined, with eyes that shone like stars: 'The Persian knew Him. Ormuzd was His name: Unpitying Light against the darkness warred; Against the Light the Darkness. Could the Light Remit, one moment's length, to pierce that gloom, Himself in gloom were swallowed.' Yet again In silence Heida sat; then cried aloud, 'Odin, and all his radiant Æsir Gods Forth thronging daily from the golden gates Of Asgard City, their supernal house, War on that giant brood of Jotünheim, Lodged 'mid their mountains of eternal ice Which circles still that sea surrounding earth, Man's narrow home. I know that mystery now! That warfare means the war of Good on Ill: We shared that warfare once! This day, depraved, Warring, we war alone for rage and hate; Men fight as fight the lion and the pard: For them the sanctity of war is lost, Lost like the kindred sanctity of Love, Our household boast of old. The Father-God Vowed us to battle but as Virtue's proof, High test of softness scorned. His warrior knew 'Twas Odin o'er the battle field who sent Pure-handed maiden Goddesses, the Norns, Not vulture-like, but dove-like, mild as dawn, To seal the foreheads of his sons elect, Seal them to death, the bravest with a kiss: His warrior, arming, cried aloud, "This day I speed five Heroes to Valhalla's Hall: To-morrow night in love I share their Feast!" He honoured whom he slew.' To her the King: 'That Stranger with severer speech than thine, Sharp flail and stigma, charged the world with sin, The vast, wide world, and not one race alone: Each nation, he proclaimed, from Man's great stem Issuing, had with it borne one Word divine Rapt from God's starry volume in the skies, Each word a separate Truth, that, angel-like, Before them winging, on their faces flung Splendour of destined morn, and led man's race Triumphant long on virtue's road. Themselves Had changed that True to False. The Judge had come; That Power Who both beginning is and end Had stooped to earth to judge the earth with fire; A fire of Love, He came to cleanse the just; A fire of Vengeance, to consume the impure: His fan is in His hand: the chaff shall burn; The grain be garnered. "Fall, high palace roofs," He cried, "for ye have sheltered dens of sin: Fall, he that, impious, scorned the First and Last; Fall, he that bowed not to the hoary head; Fall, he that loosed by fraud the maiden zone; Fall, he that lusted for the poor man's field; Fall, rebel Peoples; fall, disloyal Kings; And fall"—dread Mother, is the word offence?— "False Gods, long served; for God Himself is nigh."'

The monarch ceased: on Heida's face that hour He feared to look; but when she spake, her voice Betrayed no passion of a soul perturbed: Austere it was; not wrathful; these her words: 'Son, as I hearkened to thy tale this day, Memory returned to me of visions three That lighted three great junctures of my life: And thrice thy words were echoes strange of words That shook my tender childhood, slumbering half, Half-waked by matin beams—"The Gods must die." Three times that awful sound was in mine ear: Later I learned that voice was nothing new. My Son, the earliest record of our Faith, So sacred that on Runic stave or stone None dared to grave it, lore from age to age Transmitted by white lips of trembling seers, Spared not to wing, like arrow sped from God, That word to man, "Valhalla's Gods must die!" The Gods and Giant Race that strove so long, Met in their last and mightiest battle field, Must die, and die one death. That prophet-voice The Gods have heard. Therefore they daily swell Valhalla's Hall with heroes rapt from earth To aid them in that fight.' On Heida's face At last the King, his head uplifting, gazed:— There where the inviolate calm had dwelt alone A million thoughts, each following each, on swept, That calm beneath them still, as when some grove, O'er-run by sudden gust of summer storm, With inly-working panic thrills at first, Then springs to meet the gale, while o'er it rush Shadows with splendours mixed. Upon her breast Came down the fire divine. With lifted hands She stood: she sang a death-song centuries old, The dirge prophetic both of Gods and men:

'The iron age shall make an iron end: The men who lived in hate, or impious love, Shall meet in one red battle field. That day The forests of the earth, blackening, shall die; The stars down-fall; the Wingèd Hound of Heaven, That chased the Sun from age to age, shall close O'er it at last; the Ash Tree, Ygdrasil, Whose boughs o'er-roof the skies, whose roots descend To Hell, whose leaves are lives of men, whose boughs The destined empires that o'er-awe the world, Shall drop its fruit unripe. The Midgard Snake, Circling that sea which girds the orb of earth, Shall wake, and turn, and ocean in one wave O'er-sweep all lands. Thereon shall Naglfar ride, The skeleton ship all ribbed with bones of men, Whose sails are woven of night, and by whose helm Stand the Three Fates. When heaves that ship in sight, Then know the end draws nigh.' She ceased; then spake: 'If any doubt, the Voluspà tells all, The song the mystic maiden, Vola, sang; Our first of prophets she, as I the last: She sang that song no Prophet dared to write.' But Sigebert made answer where he knelt, Old Faith back rushing blindly on his heart: 'Though man's last nation lay a wreath of dust, Though earth were sea, not less in heaven the Gods Would hold their revels still; Valhalla's Halls Resound the heroes' triumph!' Once again Heida arose: once more her pallid face Shone lightning-like, wan cheeks and flashing eyes; Once more she sang: 'The Warder of the Gods, Soundeth the Gjallar Trumpet, never heard Before by Gods or mortals: from their feast The everlasting synod of the Gods Rush forth, gold-armed, with chariot and with horse: First rides the Father of the flock divine, Odin, our King, and, at his right hand, Thor Whose thunder hammer splits the mountain crags And level lays the summits of the world; Heimdall and Bragi, Uller, Njord, and Tyr, Behind them throng; with these the concourse huge Of lesser Gods, and Heroes snatched from earth, Since man's first battle, part to bear with Gods In this their greatest. From their halls of ice To meet them stride the mighty Giant-Brood, The moving mountains of old Jötunheim, Strong with all strengths of Nature, flood or fire, Glacier, or stream volcanic from red hills Cutting through grass-green billows;—on they throng Topping the clouds, and, leagues before them, flinging Huge shade, like shade of mountains cast o'er wastes When sets the sun.' A little time she ceased; Then fiercelier sang: 'Flanking that Giant-Brood I see two Portents, terrible as Sin:— The Midgard Snake primeval at the right, With demon-crest as haughtily upheaved As though all ocean curled into one wave:— A million rainbows braid that glooming arch; And Death therein is mirrored. At the left, On moves that brother Terror, wolf in shape, Which, bound till now by craft of prescient Gods, Weltered in Hell's abyss. Till came the hour A single hair inwoven by heavenly hand Sufficed to chain that monster to his rock;— His fast is over now; his dusky jaws At last the Eternal Hunger lifts distent As far as heaven from earth.' The Prophetess One moment pressed her palms upon her eyes, Then flung them wide. 'The Father of the Gods, Our Odin, at that Portent hurls his lance; And Thor, though bleeding fast, with hammer raised Deals with that Serpent's scales.' 'The Gods shall win,' Shouted the King, forgetting at that hour All save the strife, while on his brow there burned Hue of the battle at the battle's height When no man staunches wound. With voice serene (The storm had left her) Heida made reply: 'If any doubt, the Voluspà tells all. Ere yet Valhalla's lower heaven was shaped Muspell, the great Third Heaven immeasurable, Above it towered, throne of that God Supreme, Who knew beginning none, and knows no end: High on its southern cliff that dread One sits, Nor ever from the South withdraws His gaze, Nor ever drops that bright, sky-pointing Sword Whose splendour dims the noontide sun. That God— He, and the Spirit-Host that wing His light, When shines the Judgment Sign, shall stand on earth, And judge the earth with fire. Nor men nor Gods Shall face that fire and live.' As Heida spake The broad full moon above the forest soared, And changed her form to light. With hands out-stretched She sang her last of songs: 'The Hour is come: Bifrost, the rainbow-bridge 'twixt heaven and earth Shatters; the crystal walls of heaven roll in: Above the ruins ride the Sons of Light. That dread One first— Forth from His helm the intolerable beam Strikes to the battle-field; the Giant-Brood Die in that flame; and Odin, and his Gods: Valhalla falls, and with it Jötunheim, Its ice-piled mountains melting into waves: In fire are all things lost!' Then wept the King: 'Alas for Odin and his brethren Gods That in their great hands stayed the northern land! Alas for man!' But Heida, with fixed face Whereon there sat its ancient calm, replied: 'Nothing that lived but shall again have life, Such life as virtue claims. Ill-working men With Loki and with Hela, evil Gods, Shall dwell far down in Náströnd's death-black pile Compact of serpent scales, whose thousand gates Face to the North, blinded by endless storm: But from the sea shall rise a happier earth, Holier and happier. There the good and true Secure shall gladden, and the fiery flame Harm them no more. Another Asgard there Where stood that earlier, ere our fathers left Their native East, shall lift sublimer towers Dawn-lighted by a loftier Ararat: Just men and pure shall pace its palmy steeps With him of race divine yet human heart, Baldur, upon whose beaming front the Gods Gazing, exulted; from whose lips mankind Shall gather counsel. Hand in hand with him Shall stand the blind God, Hödur, now not blind, That, witless, slew him with the mistletoe, Yet loved him well. Others, both men and Gods, That dread Third Heaven attained, shall make abode With Him Who ever is, and ever was, Enthroned like Him upon its southern cliff, Drinking the light immortal. From beneath, Like winds from flowery wildernesses borne, The breath of all good deeds and virtuous thoughts, Their own, or others', since the worlds were made, All generous sufferings, o'er their hearts shall hang, Fragrance perpetual; and, where'er they gaze, The Vision of their God shall on them shine.'

Thus Heida spake, and ceased; then added, 'Son, Our Faith shall never suffer wreck: fear nought! Fulfilment, not Destruction, is its end. But thou return, and bid thy herald guest Who sought thee, wandering from his westward Isle, Approach my gates at dawn, and in mine ear Divulge his message to this land. Farewell!'

Then from his knees the monarch rose, and took Through the huge moonlit woods his homeward way.