Balder Dead

The gods laughed when they saw Balder walk unharmed through fire and iron, through stone and steel. Nothing could wound their golden son, their radiant prince of light. But in the halls of Asgard, one small plant had been forgotten, too humble to swear the oath that every other thing in existence had sworn. Loki, the trickster, the永远 plotting force of chaos, forged a spear from that humble mistletoe. He gave it to Baldr's blind brother, the unwitting instrument of divine tragedy. In a moment of sport, the spear flew. Balder died. And the world fell into shadow. Arnold's 1855 epic poem resurrects this ancient Norse myth with Victorian elegiac power. It is a meditation on the fragility of joy, the inevitability of loss, and the cruel irony that the smallest oversight can undo even the mightiest of gods.