Thrym

“ So he went to Freyja and said, "Will you let me have your falcon suit? I can get the hammer back if you will." Freyja said, "Yes, of course I will. If I had a gold suit you could have it. Any thing to get the hammer back."
Loki took the falcon suit and put it on. He flew over the city. All the people saw him flying. They said, "What a strange bird!" They did not know that it was Loki going for the hammer.
When Loki came to the city of the Frost Giants, he took off the falcon suit. He walked and walked until he came to Thrym's house. Thrym was the giant who took the hammer. ”

“ Then Thor roared with rage. "I will seek this impudent Thrym!" he cried. "I will crush him into bits, and teach him to meddle with the weapon of the Æsir!"
"Softly, softly," said Loki, smiling maliciously. "He is a shrewd giant, and a mighty. Even you, great Thor, cannot go to him and pluck the hammer from his hand as one would slip the rattle from a114 baby's pink fist. Nay, you must use craft, Thor; and it is I who will teach you, if you will be patient." ”

“ The Norse gods (As, pl. Æsir, gen. pl. Asa) dwelt in As-garth, a high burg in the midst of the earth; round them lived the race of men in Manheim, or Manhome. All round Manheim rolled the great sea, and beyond that sea, and below the earth, was Iötunheim, Etinhome, Ogreland, the abode of the huge Giants of Frost and Snow, who were at perpetual feud with gods and men, and ever watchful to do them mischief. One of the chiefest and hugest of these giants was Thrym, who, while Thorr was asleep, contrived to steal his hammer ”

“ So Thyrsis once more was a field of warring motives; once more he faced the curse of his life—that he could not be as other men, he could not have other men’s virtues. It was the latest aspect, and the most tragic, of that impulse in him which had made him fight so hard against marriage; which had made him quote to Corydon the lines of the outlaw’s song—
“The fiend whose lantern lights the mead Were better mate than I!” ”

“ What an old, old story it was to him—this anguish and remorse! These ecstasies of resolution that vanished like a cloud-wrack—these protestations and noble sentiments that counted for naught in conduct! And his was to be the whole heritage of impotence and futility; he, too, was to struggle and agonize—and to finish with his foot in the trap!
This idea was like a white-hot goad to him. After such an experience there would be several months of toil and penance, and of savage self-immolation. It was hard to punish a man who had so little; but Thyrsis managed to find ways. ”

“ If ugly things exist, don’t we have to hear of them and know of them? And so why frighten ourselves because they are in our minds?”
“But Thyrsis,” cried she, “they are so hateful!”
“Yes,” he said. “But then the more you hate them, the more they haunt you!”
“That’s just it!” she exclaimed.
“But what harm can they do? Can they have any effect upon your character? You must say to yourself that all this is a consequence of the structure of your brain-cells. What could be more futile than trying to forget? As if the very essence of the trying was not remembering!” ”

“ Somewhere underneath, not yet understood and mastered, was pent this mighty force that in the end would revolutionize all human ideas and institutions. Here was faith, here was vision, here was the power of all powers; and how was it to be delivered and made conscious, and brought into the service of life?
Most women liked Thyrsis, because they divined in some vague way this attitude; and some men hated him for the same reason. These men, Thyrsis observed, were the slave-drivers; they held that woman was the weaker vessel, and for this they had their own motives. ”

“ To Thyrsis he seemed like some general commanding an army in battle, with the hopes of future ages hanging upon his skill. But this was a general who fought, not with sword and fire, but with ideas; a conqueror in the cause of “right reason and the will of God”. He wrote simply, as a scientist; and yet one could feel the passion behind the quiet words—the hourly shock of the incessant conflict, the grim persistence which pressed on in the face of obloquy and persecution, the courage which had been tested through generations of anguish and toil. ”

“ A boy of Thyrsis’ age had no right to be seething with such bitterness; there must be some fundamental and terrible cause. He was destroying himself, he was eating out his heart in this isolation; he was so wrapped up in his own miseries, his own wrongs—in all the concerns of his own exaggerated ego!
They were seated beside a little streamlet in the woods. “What you need is something to get you out of yourself,” the critic was saying—“something to restore your sanity and balance. It’ll come to you some day. Perhaps it’ll be a love-affair—you’ll meet some woman who’ll carry you away. ”

“ Thyrsis replied, “you should not have put yourself at her mercy.”
“How I hate her!” cried Corydon. “How I hate her!”
“You must learn to protect yourself from such people, Corydon.”
“I won’t meet them at all! I’m not able to face them—I’ve none of their weapons, none of their training. I don’t want to know about them, or their kind of life! They have no souls!”
“It isn’t easy for them to understand,” said Thyrsis. “They have never been poor—”
“That woman talks about the Greek love of beauty! What sacrifice has she ever made for beauty—what agony has she ever dared for it? ”

“ There was one more night to be sat through and Thyrsis, whose restless intellect must needs be dealing with all issues, had by then fought his way through this terror also. They must get control of themselves at all hazards, he said; they must face the facts. ”

“ Thyrsis was under the necessity of sweeping clean his soul, because of all the luxury and wantonness he saw in this metropolis, and the madness to which it goaded his soul. Some day fame would come to him, he knew—wealth also, perhaps; and oh, there must be one man in all the city who was not corrupted, who did not learn extravagance and self-indulgence, who practiced as well as preached the life of faith! And so, again and again, he and Corydon would renew the pledges of their courtship-days—pledges to a discipline of Spartan sternness. ”

“ But then the other mood would come upon him—the mood that he knew to be the real expression of himself. He would begin the battle of his genius again; he would “hear the echoes afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting”. If one gave one’s self up to the body, and accepted the regimen and the laws of the body, how should the soul ever come to be free? To make such a concession was to pass upon it a sentence of life-imprisonment!
So would come to Thyrsis again that sense of the awful tragedy that was impending in their lives. Some day, he knew, he would break out of this prison. ”

“ And in it he had set forth the view of life that had come to him—
“The quest of the spirit’s gain— Lured by the graces of pleasure, And lashed by the furies of pain. Thy weakness shall sigh for an Eden, But the sword shall flame at the gate; For far is the home of thy vision And strong is the hand of thy fate!”
Section 13. Though Thyrsis had no time to realize it, it was in this long and bitter struggle that he won whatever power he had in his future life. It was here that he learned “to hold his will above him as his law”, and to defy the world for the sake of his ideal. ”

“ That was the burden which this gift laid upon Thyrsis. He soon discovered that these visions of wonder came but once, and that when they were gone, they were gone forever. And he must learn to grapple with them as they fled, to labor with them and to hold them fast, at the cost of whatever heartbreaking strain. Thus alone could men have even the feeblest reflexion of their beauty—upon which to feed their souls forever after. ”

“ The Nymphs amazed my melancholy see,
And, Thyrsis! cry—what will become of thee?
What would'st thou, Thyrsis? such should not appear
The brow of youth, stern, gloomy, and severe,
Brisk youth should laugh and love—ah shun the fate
Of those twice wretched mopes who love too late! ”

“ He wanted to do what was right, with all his soul he wanted it; if he were to do wrong, or to make her think less of him, he could never forgive himself all his life. But then would come the wild surge of his longing, and his man’s power would cry out within him. It was his business to overcome her shrinking, to compel her to yield. The question of the doctor rang in his ears as a taunt—“Why are you a man?” Why was he a man?
Section 9. In the end these emotions reached a point where Thyrsis could no longer bear them. They were a torment to him, they deprived him of all rest and sleep. ”

“ Thrale, in consequence, lived with me seventeen and a half years, during which time I tried but twice to persuade him to do anything, and but once, and that in vain, to let anything alone. Even my daughters, as soon as they could reason, were always allowed, and even encouraged, by me to reason their own way, and not suffer their 300 respect or affection for me to mislead their judgment. Let us keep the mind clear if we can from prejudices, or truth will never be found at all. ”

“ And as Thyrsis sat and thought about this, he clenched his hands. Some day the world would hear about it—some day the world would think about it! Some day people would behold life—would realize what it was and what it meant. They did not realize it now—else how could it be that women, who bore the race with so much pain and sorrow, should be drudges and slaves, or the ornaments and playthings of men? Else how could it be that life, which cost such a fearful price, should be so cheap upon the earth? For every man that lived and walked alive, some woman had had to bear this agony ”

“ And what could the modern man, a solitary and predatory wolf in the wilderness of laissez faire—what could he conceive of such a state of soul? What would happen to a man who gave himself up to such a state of soul, in a community where the wolf-law and the wolf-customs prevailed?
A grim purpose had been forming itself in Thyrsis’ mind. He would suppress the artist in himself for the present—he would do it, cost whatever agony it might. ”

“ Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble. But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.... Oh, Thyrza, the world is sown over with young, brave lives, and it’s our job to see that they are not as the seed scattered by the wayside, sown in vain. ”

“ Thyrsis wished to portray all this from the point of view of the humble private, who got none of the glory, and expected none, but only suffering and toil; whose lot it was to march and countermarch, to delve and sweat in the trenches, to be stifled by the heat and drenched by the rain and frozen by the cold; to wade through seas of blood and anguish, to be wounded and captured and imprisoned, to be lured by victory and blasted by defeat. ”

“ A feeling of awe stole over Thyrsis as he watched her—a feeling the like of which he had never known in his life before. She was a creature consecrated, made holy by suffering; she was the sacredness of life incarnate, a thing godlike, beyond earth. It came as a revelation, changing the whole aspect of life to him. It was hard to realize—that woman, woman who endured this, was the same being that he had met in the world all his life—laughing and talking, careless and commonplace. ”

“ Thyrsis was embarrassed. He was not sure, he said; but he did not think that writing could be taught. Anyway, one had first to have something worth saying—
“Are you laboring under the delusion that you know anything about writing?” demanded the professor. (He had written across Thyrsis’ last composition the words, “Feeble and trivial”.)
“Why, no,” began the boy.
“Because if you are, let me disabuse your mind at once. There is no one in the class who knows less about writing than yourself.”
“I think,” said Thyrsis, “it’s because I can’t bring myself to write in cold blood. ”

“ Thrine moaned and clung to Rald's bare forearm, forgetting he was a thief and she a royal lady.
"I cursed all men—all human races! I was a monstrosity unfit for existence, of no class or race. I fled the apes as I fled mankind. T hated every living thing, for none was like me. I was alone. In my solitude I learned from the demons of the forests—and the mountains—they did not shun my deformities! If you enter—my house—you will see the results of my well-learned lessons, oh Thrall! I hope they drive you mad!"
"No man shall enter the accursed walls," muttered the king. ”

“ It was a world that would have made happy the soul of any writer of romances; but to Thyrsis in earliest childhood the fates had given the gift of seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. There was an incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound; there were jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a breath of suspicion and scandal hanging like a poisonous cloud over everything. ”

“ And this new Lord, who had purchased the people, and held them in bond, was extracting a toll of suffering and privation, of accident and disease and death, that was worse than the agony of many wars. The whole land was groaning and sweating beneath the burden of it; and Thyrsis, who shared the pain, and knew the meaning of it, was sick with the responsibility it put upon him, yearning for a thousand voices with which he might cry the truth aloud.
Some one must bring America face to face with its soul again ”