heart alone hath dared
To bid that man to the mountain, and behold his glory bared.
Ah, if the son of Sigmund might wot of the thing I would,
Then how were the ages bettered, and the world all waxen good!
Then how were the past forgotten and the weary days of yore,
And the hope of man that dieth and the waste that never bore!
How should this one live through the winter and know of all increase!
How should that one spring to the sunlight and bear the blossom of
peace!
No more should the long-lived wisdom o'er the waste of the wilderness
stray;
Nor the clear-eyed hero hasten to the deedless ending of day.
And what if the hearts of the Volsungs for this deed of deeds were
born,
How then were their life-days evil and the end of their lives forlorn?"

There stood Sigurd the Volsung, and heard how the harp-strings rang,
But of other things they told him than the hope that the Master sang;
And his world lay far away from the Dwarf-king's eyeless realm
And the road that leadeth nowhere, and the ship without a helm:
But he spake: "How oft shall I say it, that I shall work thy will?
If my father hath made me mighty, thine heart shall I fulfill
With the wisdom and gold thou wouldest, before I wend on my ways;
For now hast thou failed me nought, and the sword is the wonder of
days."

No word for a while spake Regin; but he hung his head adown
As a man that pondereth sorely, and his voice once more was grown
As the voice of the smithying-master as he spake: "This Wrath of thine
Hath cleft the hard and the heavy; it shall shear the soft and the
fine:
Come forth to the night and prove it."
So they twain went forth abroad,
And the moon lay white on the river and lit the sleepless ford,
And down to its pools they wended, and the stream was swift and full;
Then Regin cast against it a lock of fine-spun wool,
And it whirled about on the eddy till it met the edges bared,
And as clean as the careless water the laboured fleece was sheared.

Then Regin spake: "It is good, what the smithying-carle hath wrought:
Now the work of the King beginneth, and the end that my soul hath
sought.
Thou shalt toil and I shall desire, and the deed shall be surely done:
For thy Wrath is alive and awake and the story of bale is begun."

There