That, loving, so you may behold me not—

What thing I seem, but only hear my voice—

What truth I am. Thordis, even now I dreamed

A dream more high and awful than the clouds

And breathless peaks afire of poesie:

We stood together on the morning’s brink;

Crater and frozen cliff and snowy scar

Hung, avalanche on avalanche, below,

Below them still,—the world! You spoke to me;

Sweeter than measures of imagined song

Before the harp is struck, your voice! “Listen!” you said;

And echoing from scar and crater rose

The clanging of a chain. You clung to me;

You clung to me and spoke not.—I have done.

INGIMUND

Egil!

[Springing forward, Egil seizes Thordis’s hand,

which he raises to his lips.]

[Pg 46]

EGIL

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