Page:The Prose Edda (1916 translation by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur).pdf/152

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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.