The Launch of the Valkyrie

“ BUILD me a swift avenger,
Now, for my royal dead !
Build me a ship, O master,
Whose name shall breathe disaster,
Whose soul shall wed with danger !
Build a sea-scourge ! ” she said.

Hard by the eagle’s eyry
They felled the witch’s pine.
“Now, may the gods have pity
On seaboard thorp and city,
When that this fiend Valkyrie
Is loosed upon the brine ! ”

So spake the master-builder,
Who, daily at his toil,
Trembled to feel the yearning
Of pulses seaward turning,
Beneath the gyves that held her
Bound to the sluggish soil;

Till, of a glad gray morning,
Folding his arms, “ ’T is done,”
He said ; and the sea-king’s daughter
Down by the green sea water,
Pale in her sad, sweet mourning,
Rose, and came with the sun.

“O ship of hope and passion ! ”
She sang; “O ship of doom!
From winds and waters listening
This saga for thy christening,
How shall we frame and fashion
A song of days to come !

“In whirl of shouting weather
Thy chief delight shall be,
When plumed Niorder urges
His racing, tossing surges,
With ringing spur and tether,
On foamy shoals of sea;

“When swift with nodding motion.
And chime of smiting mail,
Uprise and ride together,
With blowing robe and feather,
Down rainy rims of ocean,
The squadrons of the gale.

“Through nights ringed round with thunder,
When, landward, gull and loon
Go by thee, gray and wailing,
Thou shalt be sailing, sailing,
By lone sea-reaches, under
The rainy yellow moon ;

“And death-lights, night and morning,
Shall burn upon thy spars,
And hollow, hollow, hollow,
Adown thy wake shall follow
A wind of fear, and warning,
Of tempests, and of wars.

“ So sail ! The tides shall slumber
About thy keel no more,
And vainly for thee, ever,
The harbor light shall quiver,
Through years no man may number,
Till thy great quest is o’er.”

Gone is the toiling master ;
Gone are the workmen old ;
And princess proud, and maiden,
With years and sorrow laden,
Have crept from life’s disaster
Beneath the turf and mold ;

But oft, from crag and eyry,
When winds are whirled with snow,
And headlands blend together,
The watchers through the weather
Still hail the ship Valkyrie,
And mark her canvas blow;

And eyes of lone sea torches
Espy her sailing down,
And bells, with horror shaken,
On midnight coasts awaken,
And clamor from their porches
To sleeping thorp and town.