Thor the Mighty

Thor is mighty, O seafarer, Thor the bright flame-haired
Fire-white the lightning growling and glittering across his breast;
Thor journeys the far lands where no god has dared,
Even to the mountains of the giants in the far gold west.

He swaggers into the giants’ stone-built, cloud-high hall,
He thunders, O seafarer, “Who is mighty, to wrestle me?”
And the giants loudly laugh, cracking beams and pillars all;
Shouts Thor, “Give me mead, I’ll drink more than any man surely,”

And the giants hand him a horn, wondrous wide and deep.
Thor drinks, O seafarer, he drinks down a vast foaming mead
But the mead remains, though the sea shakes in sleep;
The giants roar, “That was a small deed, that was no strong deed.”

Thor is shamed, hot scarlet is his face, a hot raging fire
And he cries, “I shall wrestle a man full to the ground,
I shall wrestle him to choke in the dust and to weep in desire.”
Shout the giants, “Lift this little gray cat who makes no sound.”

Thor strains his might, O seafarer, his brawny might;
The mist-gray cat only slightly stretches its back and head
The god lifts until he lifts just one gray paw: groaning is that fight,
Shivering the great serpent wrapped round earth and seabed.

“One more wrestling,” shout the giants; “throw down this crone
If you cannot lift a little cat soft as mist and gray as cloud.”
And Thor wrestles her, O seafarer, until his heart gives groan,
He falls to one knee, totters as if aged, he who was so proud;

The giants laugh, they roar, they set out a great feast gladly
A thousand years they feasted, O seafarer, ten thousand years,
For Thor who wrestled with age, lifted the serpent and drank the sea,
The heaving purple sea that foams so cold on all men’s tears.

© Cameron La Follette

- License: This poem may be freely distributed, provided
it remains unchanged, including copyright notice and this License -