that feareth nought,
And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never fail,
And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail.

"But next unto Otter my brother he gave the snare and the net,
And the longing to wend through the wild-wood, and wade the highways
wet;
And the foot that never resteth, while aught be left alive
That hath cunning to match man's cunning or might with his might to
strive.

"And to me, the least and the youngest, what gift for the slaying of
ease?
Save the grief that remembers the past, and the fear that the future
sees;
And the hammer and fashioning-iron, and the living coal of fire;
And the craft that createth a semblance, and fails of the heart's
desire;
And the toil that each dawning quickens, and the task that is never
done;
And the heart that longeth ever, nor will look to the deed that is
won.

"Thus gave my father the gifts that might never be taken again;
Far worse were we now than the Gods, and but little better than men.
But yet of our ancient might one thing had we left us still:
We had craft to change our semblance, and could shift us at our will
Into bodies of the beast-kind, or fowl, or fishes cold;
For belike no fixed semblance we had in the days of old,
Till the Gods were waxen busy, and all things their form must take
That knew of good and evil, and longed to gather and make."

But when we turn to the passage of the _eclaircissement_ between Sigurd
and Brynhild, that most dramatic and most _modern_ moment in the ancient
tragedy, the moment where the clouds of savage fancy scatter in the light
of a hopeless human love, then, I must confess, I prefer the simple,
brief prose of Mr. Morris's translation of the "Volsunga" to his rather
periphrastic paraphrase. Every student of poetry may make the comparison
for himself, and decide for himself whether the old or the new is better.
Again, in the final fight and massacre in the hall of Atli, I cannot but
prefer the Slaying of the Wooers, at the close of the "Odyssey," or the
last fight of Roland at Roncesvaux, or the prose version of the
"Volsunga." All these are the work of men who were war-smiths as well as
song-smiths. Here is a passage from the "murder grim and great":--

"So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on
high,
But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry
From