The Death of Balder There was one shadow which always fell over Asgard. Sometimes in the long years the gods almost forgot it, it lay so far off, like a dim cloud in a clear sky; but Odin saw it deepen and widen as he looked out into the universe, and he knew that the last great battle would surely come, when the gods themselves would be destroyed and a long twilight would rest on all the worlds; and now the day was close at hand. Misfortunes never come singly to men, and they did not to the gods. Idun, the beautiful goddess of youth, whose apples were the joy of all Asgard, made a resting place for herself among the massive branches of Ygdrasil, and there every evening came Brage, and sang so sweetly that the birds stopped to listen, and even the Norns, …show more content…
Wherever he went his coming was like the coming of sunshine, and all the beauty of summer was but the shining of his face. When men’s hearts were white like the light, and their lives clear as the day, it was because Balder was looking down upon them with those soft, clear eyes that were open windows to the soul of God. He had always lived in such a glow of brightness that no darkness had ever touched him; but one morning, after Idun and Brage had gone, Balder’s face was sad and troubled. He walked slowly from room to room in his palace Breidablik, stainless as the sky when April showers have swept across it because no impure thing had ever crossed the threshold, and his eyes were heavy with sorrow. In the night terrible dreams had broken his sleep, and made it a long torture. The air seemed to be full of awful changes for him, and for all the gods. He knew in his soul that the shadow of the last great day was sweeping on; as he looked out and saw the worlds lying in light and beauty, the fields yellow with waving grain, the deep fiords flashing back the sunbeams from their clear depths, the verdure cloth- ing the loftiest mountains, and knew that over all this darkness and
Steinbeck very intelligently shows the dying of day through the lengthening “shadows” and that darkness is taking over. By
"The night was gone. The morning star shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it." (24)
“THe shadows around me roused themselves as if from a deep sleep and left silently in every direction”
The beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God begins with the quote, “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation...” (Hurston, 1). The ships, or the horizon, in this quote is
” They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” -161-
In 1600 BC it was completely dark outside. No one lived and nothing roamed the earth. The earth was created by the land and water god and the nature was created by the nature god. What had not yet been created was the sun and the moon. Later in 1700 BC the god of making human life created 2 people.
“Early evening light slants over the mountains..The crows have disappeared...I am no longer cold...In the distance, I hear the sound of
Tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the
he was unaware of, reasoning with no one by himself in the solitude of his mind. And then came
around at once. And there were white oaks, and a great number of crows, or at least the
Ross: "by the clock, 'tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp" (II.iv.6-7).
God yet that star was nowhere to be found. He noticed that when his uncle had been cursed by
Like the season of Fall, the twilight of a day is a metaphor for the passing of time. Each new day can be seen as a life itself. Each morning and afternoon -- when the day is young -- is a life full of possibilities and opportunities. Then twilight approaches, and the day is done, only to be followed by sleep -- or as Shakespeare calls it, "Death's second self".
others see the light of god was coming from them. They had to set a
He was taken overy by Life-in-Death and his sin nature had separated him from God, for "The horned moon, with one bright star / Within the nether tip" (line 210-211) is a pagan symbol signifying the absence of God.