[Pg 12]

BALDUR

Oh, would it were! Look not; this kin is monstrous.

FREYJA

Is it not a god as we?

BALDUR

It is a god,

Freyja, but not as we.—It is the wolf-god,

Lord of the dumb and kithless wild, that live

To breed and kill their forms of dreadful beauty—

A vacant sacrifice to him: the doe,

That stills all night her knocking heart, to hear

The wood-cat’s footfall, breathes mute prayer to Fenris;

The frothing stag, that blazons the black boar

With gules of death, bruits hymns to Fenris; yet

Their pangs assuage him not, for he himself

Remains the abject deity of lust,

His rites, the stretched claw and the stiffened mane;

His priest—a sated fang; his altar—fear.

FREYJA

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