Memorial Day

This is an expanded and updated version of a post originally published Memorial Day, 2010.





They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.


They launched the burning ship!
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed,
Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!


So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.
     —from "Tegner's Drapa" by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

from Thor #343 (Marvel, May 1984), script, pencils, and inks by Walter Simonson;
colors by Christie Scheele; letters by John Workman