European Elegies/Winter/The sun-dirge

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56.THE SUN-DIRGE

I saw the sun sink, blotched with blood;
My fainting spirit almost failed;
All former solar glories paled
Beside that lurid plenitude.

I saw the sun sink, while it shed
Such fire that I swooned, and sore
A seething river, thick with gore,
Bellowed from dark depths of the dead.

I watched that sun with eyes astrain
In fluttering, fearful joylessness;
My very heart in its distress
Dissolved away in clotted pain.

I watched that sun with anguisht eyes;
Impending death began to freeze
My tongue as taut as winter trees,
And utter frost congealed the skies.

Then my sun sank to rise no more,
For waters of the wild waste hills
Went wailing o'er me, and my ills
Were washed to nothing down death's shore.


From the Old Icelandic, eleventh century.

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