THE MODERN VIKINGS

Three little lovely Vikings

Came sailing over the sea,

From a fair and distant country,

And put into port with me.

The first—how well I remember—

Sir Hjalmar was he hight.

With a lusty Norseland war-whoop,

He came in the dead of night.

He met my respectful greeting

With a kick and a threatening frown;

He pressed all the house in his service,

And turned it upside-down.

He thrust, when I meekly objected,

A clinched little fist in my face;

I had no choice but surrender,

And give him charge of the place.

He heeded no creature’s pleasure;

But oft, with a conqueror’s right,

He sang in the small hours of morning,

And dined in the middle of night.

And oft, to amuse his Highness—

For naught we feared as his frowns—

We bleated and barked and bellowed,

And danced like circus-clowns.

Then crowed with delight our despot;

So well he liked his home,

He summoned his brother, Algie,

From the realm beyond the foam.

And he is a laughing tyrant,

With dimples and golden curls;

He stole a march on our heart-gates,

And made us his subjects and churls.

He rules us gayly and lightly,

With smiles and cajoling arts;

He went into winter-quarters

In the innermost nooks of our hearts.

And Bayard, the last of my Vikings,

As chivalrous as your name!

With your sturdy and quaint little figure,

What havoc you wrought when you came!

There’s a chieftain in you—a leader

Of men in some glorious path—

For dauntless you are, and imperious,

And dignified in your wrath.

You vain and stubborn and tender

Fair son of the valiant North,

With a voice like the storm and the north-wind,

When it sweeps from the glaciers forth.

With the tawny sheen in your ringlets,

And the Norseland light in your eyes,

Where oft, when my tale is mournful,

The tears unbidden arise.

For my Vikings love song and saga,

Like their conquering fathers of old;

And these are some of the stories

To the three little tyrants I told.