It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding,
Ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure,
Ye noted it not mid your hope and your pleasure;
There was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding,
But daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.

TO THE MUSE OF THE NORTH.
[Poems by the Way 1891.

"Written before his first visit to Iceland" (1871); Mackail II, pg. 259.]

O MUSE that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong,
Thy left hand holding pity; and thy breast
Heaving with hope of that so certain rest:
Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid,

The soft lips trembling not, though they have said
The doom of the World and those that dwell therein,
The lips that smile not though thy children win
The fated Love that draws the fated Death:
O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath,
Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,
That, if it may be, I may have a part

In that great sorrow of thy children dead

That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head,
Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream,
And death the murmur of a restful stream,
But left no stain upon those souls of thine
Whose greatness through the tangled world doth shine.
O Mother, and Love and Sister all in one,
Come thou; for sure I am enough alone

That thou thine arms about my heart shouldst throw,
And wrap me in the grief of long ago.

Aus

THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG

AND THE FALL OF THE NIBLUNGS (1876 [“1877"]). [Sigmunds und Signys Zusammentreffen im Walde nach dem Tode der Volsungen (Erstes Buch).]

So she went 'twixt the yellow acres, and the green meads of the sheep,

And or ever she reached the wild-wood the night was waxen deep.

No man she had to lead her, but the path was trodden well

By those messengers of murder, the men with the tale to tell;

And the beams of the high white moon gave a glimmering day through night

Till she came where that lawn of the woods lay wide in the flood of light.

Then she looked, and lo, in its midmost a mighty man there stood,

And laboured the earth of the green-sward with a truncheon torn from the wood;

And behold, it was Sigmund the Volsung: but she cried and had no fear:

"If thou art living, Sigmund, what day's work dost thou here

In the midnight and the forest? but if thou art nought but a ghost,

Then where are those Volsung brethren, of whom thou wert best and most?"

Then he turned about unto her, and his raiment was fouled and torn,

And his eyen were great and hollow, as a famished man forlorn;

But he cried: "Hail, Sister Signy! I looked for thee before, Though what should a woman compass, she one alone and no more,

When all we shielded Volsungs did nought in Siggeir's land?

O yea, I am living indeed, and this labour of mine hand Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is wellnigh done.

So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a

stone

Where lie the grey wolf's gleanings of what was once so good."

So she set her hand to the labour, and they toiled, they twain in the wood,

And when the work was over, dead night was beginning to fail:

Then spake the white-hand Signy: "Now shalt thou tell the tale

Of the death of the Volsung brethren ere the wood thy wrath shall hide,

Ere I wend me back sick-hearted in the dwelling of kings to abide."

He said: "We sat on the tree, and well ye may wot

indeed

That we had some hope from thy good-will amidst that bitter need.

Now none had 'scaped the sword-edge in the battle utterly, And so hurt were Agnar and Helgi, that, unhelped, they were like to die;

Though for that we deemed them happier: but now when the moon shone bright,

And when by a doomed man's deeming 'twas the midmost of the night,

Lo, forth from yonder thicket were two mighty woodwolves come,

Far huger wrought to my deeming than the beasts I knew at home:

Forthright on Gylfi and Geirmund those dogs of the forest fell,

And what of men so hoppled should be the tale to tell? They tore them midst the irons, and slew them then and there,

And long we heard them snarling o'er that abundant cheer.

Night after night, O my sister, the story was the same, And still from the dark and the thicket the wild-wood

were-wolves came

And slew two men of the Volsungs whom the swordedge might not end.

And every day in the dawning did the King's own woodmen wend

To behold those craftsmen's carving and rejoice King Siggeir's heart.

And so was come last midnight, when I must play my

part:

Forsooth when those first were murdered my heart was as blood and fire;

And I deemed that my bonds must burst with my uttermost desire

To free my naked hands, that the vengeance might be

wrought;

But now was I wroth with the Gods, that had made the Volsungs for nought,

And I said: in the Day of their Doom a man's help shall they miss;

I will be as a wolf of the forest, if their kings must come to this;

Or if Siggeir indeed be their king, and their envy has brought it about

That dead in the dust lies Volsung, while the last of his seed dies out.

Therewith from out the thicket the grey wolves drew anigh,

And the he-wolf fell on Sigi, but he gave forth never

a cry,

And I saw his lips that they smiled, and his steady eyes

for a space;

And therewith was the she-wolf's muzzle thrust into my very face.

The Gods helped not, but I helped; and I too grew wolfish then;

Yea I, who have borne the sword-hilt high mid the kings of men,

I, lord of the golden harness, the flame of the Glittering

Heath,

Must snarl to the she-wolf's snarling, and snap with greedy teeth,

While my hands with the hand-bonds struggled; my teeth took hold the first

And amid her mighty writhing the bonds that bound me burst,

As with Fenrir's Wolf it shall be: then the beast with the hopples I smote,

When my left hand stiff with the bonds had got her by the throat.

But I turned when I had slain her, and there lay Sigi

dead,

And once more to the night of the forest the fretting wolf had fled.

In the thicket I hid till the dawning, and thence I saw the men,

E'en Siggeir's heart-rejoicers, come back to the place

again