e unto nothing but him and her lips with the speech-flood moved:

"O, what is the thing so mighty that my weary sleep hath torn,
And rent the fallow bondage, and the wan woe over-worn?"

He said: "The hand of Sigurd and the Sword of Sigmund's son,
And the heart that the Volsungs fashioned this deed for thee have done."
But she said: "Where then is Odin that laid me here alow?
Long lasteth the grief of the world, and manfolk's tangled woe!"

"He dwelleth above," said Sigurd, "but I on the earth abide,
And I came from the Glittering Heath the waves of thy fire to ride."

* * * * *

Then Sigurd looketh upon her, and the words from his heart arise:
"Thou art the fairest of earth, and the wisest of the wise;
O who art thou that lovest? I am Sigurd, e'en as I told;
I have slain the Foe of the Gods, and gotten the Ancient Gold;
And great were the gain of thy love, and the gift of mine earthly days,
If we twain should never sunder as we wend on the changing ways.
O who art thou that lovest, thou fairest of all things born?
And what meaneth thy sleep and thy slumber in the wilderness forlorn?"

Then the maiden told him that she had been the handmaid of the
All-father, but that she grew too proud, and Odin had sent her to
Hindfell, where the sleep thorn pierced her that she might sleep till
she found the fearless heart she would wed. Such a one had she found
now, and many were the words of prophetic wisdom and warning that
fell from her lips on the ears of Sigurd.

But many though they were they were not enough for him, who prayed
her to speak with him more of Wisdom.

So together they sat on the side of Hindfell and talked of all that is
and can be, and then together they climbed the mountain, till beneath
them they saw the kingdoms of the earth stretching far away, and
Brynhild bade him look down on her home, saying:

"Yet I bid thee look on the land 'twixt the wood and the silver sea
In the bight of the swirling river, and the house that cherished me!
There dwelleth mine earthly sister and the king that she hath wed;
There morn by morn aforetime I woke on the golden bed;
There eve by eve I tarried mid the speech and the lays of kings;
There noon by noon I wandered and plucked the blossoming things;
The little land of Lymdale by the swirling river's side,
Where Brynhild once was I called in the days ere my father died;
The little land of