Page:Poems - Sayers (1792).djvu/16

Balder, the Son of Odin, was highly celebrated among the Gods for his exquisite beauty and consummate eloquence; his office, as a Deity, was to guide the horse of day, called Skinfax, in his diurnal course, and he is therefore properly to be considered as the God of the Sun. The death of Balder was effected by the artifice of Lok, the most malicious and baneful of the Gothic Deities: Lok, however, dared not openly to destroy him with his own hand, but for this purpose he presented a spear of peculiar power to another of the Sons of Odin, Hoder, who, with this enchanted weapon, unintentionally pierced his brother to the heart. As Balder fell not in battle, his shade, in conformity to the tenets of the Gothic religion, was supposed to descend to the dwelling of Hela, the Goddess of the infernal realms. Great was the grief inHeaven