Note 27 — YOUTH AND AGE (continued 4)

When “Balder the Beautiful” was published in the Contemporary (March-May, 1877), Buchanan had the following note, which he has not repeated in his collected works: “Balder (in this poem) is the divine spirit of earthly beauty and joy, and the only one of the gods who loves and pities men. Sick of the darkness of heaven, he returns to the earth which fostered him, and of which he is beloved, and now for the first time he becomes conscious of that Shadow of Death, which darkens the lot of all mortal things.”