The next story is about Baldur, of whom Har says "that he is the best of the sons of Odin. So fair and dazzling that rays of light seem to issue from him, and thou mayest form some idea of the beauty of his hair when I tell thee that the whitest of all plants is called 'Baldur's brow'" (a plant in Sweden still called Baldur's eyebrow). Baldur is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the Æsir. "Broad glance 'tis called Where Baldur the Fair Hath built him a bower In that land where I know The least loathliness lieth." CHAPTER VI. BALDUR. PART I. THE DREAM. Upon a summer's afternoon it happened that Baldur the Bright and Bold, beloved of men and Æsir, found himself alone in his palace of Broadblink. Thor was walking low down among the valleys, his brow heavy with summer heat; Frey and Gerda sported on still waters in their cloud-leaf ship; Odin, for once, slept on the top of Air Throne; a noon-day stillness pervaded the whole earth; and Baldur in Broadblink, the wide-glancing most sunlit of palaces, dreamed a dream. Now the dream of Baldur was troubled. He knew not whence nor why; but when he awoke he found that a most new and weighty care was within him. It was so heavy that Baldur could scarcely carry it, and yet he pressed it closely to his heart, and said, "Lie there, and do not fall on any one but me." Then he rose up, and walked out from the expanded splendour of his hall, that he might seek his own mother, Frigga, and tell her what had happened to him. He found her in her crystal saloon, calm and kind, waiting to listen, and ready to sympathise; so he walked up to her, his hands pressed closely on his heart, and lay down at her feet sighing. "What is the matter, dear Baldur?" asked Frigga, gently. "I do not know, mother," answered he. "I do not know what the matter is; but I have a shadow in my heart." "Take it out, then, my son, and let me look at it," replied Frigg. "But I fear, mother, that if I do it will cover the whole earth." Then Frigga laid her hand upon the heart of her son that she might feel the shadow's shape. Her brow became clouded as she felt it; her parted lips grew pale, and she cried out, "Oh! Baldur, my beloved son! the shadow is the shadow of death!" Then said Baldur, "I will die bravely, my mother." But Frigga answered, "You shall not die at all; for I will not sleep to-night until everything on earth has sworn to me that it will neither kill nor harm you."