Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/147

⁠But when the gods were to the forest gone,
Hermod led Sleipner from Valhalla forth,
And saddled him: before that, Sleipner brooked
No meaner hand than Odin's on his mane,
On his broad back no lesser rider bore;
Yet docile now he stood at Hermod's side,
Arching his neck, and glad to be bestrode,
Knowing the god they went to seek, how dear.
But Hermod mounted him, and sadly fared
In silence up the dark untravelled road
Which branches from the north of heaven, and went
All day; and daylight waned, and night came on.
And all that night he rode, and journeyed so,
Nine days, nine nights, toward the northern ice,
Through valleys deep-ingulfed, by roaring streams.
And on the tenth morn he beheld the bridge
Which spans with golden arches Giall's stream,
And on the bridge a damsel watching armed,
In the strait passage, at the farther end,
Where the road issues between walling rocks.
Scant space that warder left for passers-by;
But as when cowherds in October drive
Their kine across a snowy mountain pass
To winter pasture on the southern side,
And on the ridge a wagon chokes the way,
Wedged in the snow; then painfully the hinds
With goad and shouting urge their cattle past,
Plunging through deep untrodden banks of snow
To right and left, and warm steam fills the air,—
So on the bridge that damsel blocked the way,
And questioned Hermod as he came, and said,—
⁠"Who art thou on thy black and fiery horse,
Under whose hoofs the bridge o'er Giall's stream

Rumbles and shakes? Tell me thy race and home.