ive in despite of Gods and of men,
If yet thy will endureth. But what shall it profit thee then
That after the fashion of Godhead thou hast gotten thee a thrall
To be thine and never another's, whatso in the world may befall?
Lo! yesterday this was a man, and to-morrow it might have been
The very joy of the people, though never again it were seen;
Yet a part of all they hoped for through all the lapse of years,
To make their laughter happy and dull the sting of tears;
To quicken all remembrance of deeds that never die,
And death that maketh eager to live as the days go by.
Yea, many a deed had he done as he lay in the dark of the mound;
As the seed-wheat plotteth of spring, laid under the face of the
ground
That the foot of the husbandman treadeth, that the wind of the winter
wears,
That the turbid cold flood hideth from the constant hope of the years.
This man that should leave in his death his life unto many an one
Wilt thou make him a God of the fearful who live lone under the sun?
And then shalt thou have what thou wouldedst when amidst of the
hazelled field
Thou kissed'st the mouth of the helper, and the hand of the people's
shield,
Shalt thou have the thing that thou wouldedst when thou broughtest me
to birth,
And I, the soul of the Wolfings, began to look on earth?
Wilt thou play the God, O mother, and make a man anew,
A joyless thing and a fearful? Then I betwixt you two,
'Twixt your longing and your sorrow will cast the sundering word,
And tell out all the story of that rampart of the sword!
I shall bid my mighty father make choice of death in life,
Or life in death victorious and the crowned end of strife."

Ere she had ended, the Wood-Sun let her hands fall down, and showed her
face, which for all its unpaled beauty looked wearied and anxious; and
she took Thiodolf's hand in hers, while she looked with eyes of love upon
the Hall-Sun, and Thiodolf laid his cheek to her cheek, and though he
smiled not, yet he seemed as one who is happy. At last the Wood-Sun
spoke and said:

"Thou sayest sooth, O daughter: I am no God of might,
Yet I am of their race, and I think with their thoughts and see with
their sight,
And the threat of the doom did I know of, and yet spared not to lie:
For I thought that the fate foreboded might touch and pass us by,
As the sword that heweth the war-helm and cleaveth a can