120
PROSE EDDA
- No truce made Baldr's brother
- With the bitter foe of earth-folk.
- Rocks shook, and crags were shivered;
- The shining Upper Heaven
- Burned; I saw the giant
- Of the boat-sailed sea-reef waver
- And give way fast before him,
- Seeing his war-like Slayer.
- Swiftly the shining shield-rim
- Shot 'neath the Cliff-Ward's shoe-soles;
- That was the wise gods' mandate,
- The War-Valkyrs willed it.
- The champion of the Waste-Land
- Not long thereafter waited
- For the speedy blow delivered
- By the Friend of the snout-troll's crusher.
- He who of breath despoileth
- Beli's baleful hirelings
- Felled on the shield rim-circled
- The fiend of the roaring mountain;
- The monster of the glen-field
- Before the mighty hammer
- Sank, when the Hill-Danes' Breaker
- Struck down the hideous caitiff.
- Then the hone hard-broken
- Hurled by the Ogress-lover
- Whirred into the brain-ridge
- Of Earth's Son, that the whetter
- Of steels, sticking unloosened
- In the skull of Odin's offspring,
- Stood there all besprinkled
- With Einridi's blood.