ngs, and the dwarfs that hate mankind. Then I came
to myself, and the Hauberk was off me, and I rose up and beheld the
battle, that the kindreds were pressing on the foe, and I thought not
then of any past time, but of the minutes that were passing; and I ran
into the fight straightway: but one followed me with that Hauberk, and I
did it on, thinking of nought but the battle. Fierce then was the fray,
yet I faltered in it; till the fresh men of the Romans came in upon us
and broke up our array. Then my heart almost broke within me, and I
faltered no more, but rushed on as of old, and smote great strokes all
round about: no hurt I got, but once more came that ugly mist over my
eyes, and again I fell unsmitten, and they bore me out of battle: then
the men of our folk gave back and were overcome; and when I awoke from my
evil dreams, we had gotten away from the fight and the Wolfing dwellings,
and were on the mounds above the ford cowering down like beaten men.
There then I sat shamed among the men who had chosen me for their best
man at the Holy Thing, and lo I was their worst! Then befell that which
never till then had befallen me, that life seemed empty and worthless and
I longed to die and be done with it, and but for the thought of thy love
I had slain myself then and there.

"Thereafter I went with the host to the assembly of the stay-at-homes and
fleers, and sat before the Hall-Sun our daughter, and said the words
which were put into my mouth. But now must I tell thee a hard and evil
thing; that I loved them not, and was not of them, and outside myself
there was nothing: within me was the world and nought without me. Nay,
as for thee, I was not sundered from thee, but thou wert a part of me;
whereas for the others, yea, even for our daughter, thine and mine, they
were but images and shows of men, and I longed to depart from them, and
to see thy body and to feel thine heart beating. And by then so evil was
I grown that my very shame had fallen from me, and my will to die: nay, I
longed to live, thou and I, and death seemed hateful to me, and the deeds
before death vain and foolish.

"Where then was my glory and my happy life, and the hope of the days
fresh born every day, though never dying? Where then was life, and
Thiodolf that once had lived?

"But now all is changed once more; I loved thee never so well as now, and
great is my grief that we must sunder, and the pain of farewell wrings my
heart. Yet sin