Rock crystals from sand and hard flint they made, Which, tinged with the rosebud’s dye, They cast into rubies and carbuncles red, And hid them in cracks hard by. They took them fresh violets all dripping with dew, Dwarf-women had plucked them, the morn,— And stained with their juice the clear sapphires blue, King Dan in his crown since hath worn. Then for emeralds they searched out the brightest green Which the young spring meadow wears. And dropped round pearls, without flaw or stain, From widows’ and maidens’ tears. And all around the cavern might plainly be shown Where giants had once been at play; For the ground was with heaps of huge muscle-shells strewn, And strange fish were marked in the clay. Here an ichthyosaurus stood out from the wall, There monsters ne’er told of in story, Whilst hard by the Nix in the waterfall Sang wildly the days of their glory. Here bones of the mammoth and mastodon, And serpents with wings and with claws; The elephant’s tusks from the burning zone Are small to the teeth in their jaws. When Loke to the dwarfs had his errand made known, In a trice for the work they were ready; Quoth Dvalin: O Lopter, it now shall be shown That dwarfs in their friendship are steady. We both trace our line from the selfsame stock; What you ask shall be furnished with speed, For it ne’er shall be said that the sons of the rock Turned their backs on a kinsman in need. They took them the akin of a large wild-boar, The largest that they could find, And the bellows they blew till the furnace ’gan roar, And the fire flamed on high for the wind. And they struck with their sledge-hammers stroke on stroke, That the sparks from the skin flew on high, But never a word good or bad spake Loke, Though foul malice lurked in his eye. The thunderer far distant, with sorrow he thought On all he’d engaged to obtain, And, as summer-breeze fickle, now anxiously sought To render the dwarfs’ labor vain. Whilst the bellows plied Brok, and Sindre the hammer, And Thor, that the sparks flew on high, And the sides of the vaulted cave rang with the clamor, Loke changed to a huge forest-fly. And he sat him all swelling with venom and spite, On Brok, the wrist just below; But the dwarf’s skin was thick, and he recked not the bite, Nor once ceased the bellows to blow. And now, strange to say, from the roaring fire Came the golden-haired Gullinburste, To serve as a charger the sun-god Frey, Sure, of all wild-boars this the first.