She is to bring forth in dire
pain a glorious hero. Open your eyes and look. Do you see how the
east wars with the wes.? It is love's first conflict--the new bride
trembles under the elder's embraces, she struggles and suffers--but
soon she shall rejoice, and thousands of torches shall be lighted
and radiate peace and gladness, because he shall he born, the
young, the strong, the beautiful princeling, who shall rule over
all peoples and whose sceptre is called love and whose crown is
called light and whose name is the new age! Thorfinn! do you
remember the saga about Thor at Utgorda Loake? He lifted the cat so
high that the trolls turned pale; he drank so deep from the horn
that the trolls trembled--but when the old woman felled him to his
knees then the trolls laughed. It was the age that vanquished him,
and it is the age that you have warred against, and which has slain
you--it is the lord of the age, it is God who has crushed you.
THORFINN. I have never known any god but my own strength, and that
god I believe in!
ORM. You don't know him--you who have so long been lying at feud
with him. It was he who drove you from your native land, and you
thought you were escaping him. It was he who struck your ships to
splinters and swallowed up your treasures and ended your power. It
was he who tore your child from you--and you said you lacked peace!
It was he--[Messenger enters.]
MESSENGER. Are you the Erl Thorfinn.
THORFINN. I am.
MESSENGER.
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