"Then Loki takes up the quarry, and is e'en as a man again; And the three wend on through the wild-wood till they come to a grassy plain Beneath the untrodden mountains; and lo! a noble house, And a hall with great craft fashioned, and made full glorious; But night on the earth was falling; so scantly might they see The wealth of its smooth-wrought stonework and its world of imagery: Then Loki bade turn thither since day was at an end, And into that noble dwelling the lords of God-home wend; And the porch was fair and mighty, and so smooth-wrought was its gold, That the mirrored stars of heaven therein might ye behold: But the hall, what words shall tell it, how fair it rose aloft, And the marvels of its windows, and its golden hangings soft, And the forest of its pillars! and each like the wave's heart shone And the mirrored boughs of the garden were dancing fair thereon. --Long years agone was it builded, and where are its wonders now? "Now the men of God-home marvelled, and gazed through the golden glow, And a man like a covetous king amidst of the hall they saw; And his chair was the tooth of the whale, wrought smooth with never a flaw; And his gown was the sea-born purple, and he bore a crown on his head, But never a sword was before him: kind-seeming words he said, And bade rest to the weary feet that had worn the wild so long. So they sat, and were men by seeming; and there rose up music and song, And they ate and drank and were merry: but amidst the glee of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the 'firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To escape from their man-like bodies; so great that day was the Earth.