O Strong Compeller! Unshapen is it hight;
There the fallow blades shall be shaken and the Dark and the Day shall
smite,
When the Bridge of the Gods is broken, and their white steeds swim the
sea,
And the uttermost field is stricken, last strife of thee and me."

"What then shall endure, O Fafnir, the tale of the battle to tell?"

"I am blind, O Strong Compeller, in the bonds of Death and Hell.
But thee shall the rattling Gold and the red rings bring unto bane."

"Yet the rings mine hand shall scatter, and the earth shall gather
again."

"Woe, woe! in the days passed over I bore the Helm of Dread,
I reared the Face of Terror, and the hoarded hate of the Dead:
I overcame and was mighty; I was wise and cherished my heart
In the waste where no man wandered, and the high house builded apart:
Till I met thine hand, O Sigurd, and thy might ordained from of old;
And I fought and fell in the morning, and I die far off from the Gold."

Then Sigurd leaned on his sword, and a dreadful voice went by
Like the wail of a God departing and the War-God's misery;
And strong words of ancient wisdom went by on the desert wind,
The words that mar and fashion, the words that loose and bind;
And sounds of a strange lamenting, and such strange things bewailed,
That words to tell their meaning the tongue of man hath failed.

Then all sank into silence, and the Son of Sigmund stood
On the torn and furrowed desert by the pool of Fafnir's blood,
And the Serpent lay before him, dead, chilly, dull, and grey;
And over the Glittering Heath fair shone the sun and the day,
And a light wind followed the sun and breathed o'er the fateful place,
As fresh as it furrows the sea-plain or bows the acres' face.

_Sigurd slayeth Regin the Master of Masters on the Glittering Heath._

There standeth Sigurd the Volsung, and leaneth on his sword,
And beside him now is Greyfell and looks on his golden lord,
And the world is awake and living; and whither now shall they wend,
Who have come to the Glittering Heath, and wrought that deed to its
end?
For hither comes Regin the Master from the skirts of the field of
death,
And he shadeth his eyes from the sunlight as afoot he goeth and saith:
"Ah, let me live for a while! for a while and all shall be well,
When passed is the house of murder and I c