st 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?"

She said: "I am she that loveth: I was born of the earthly folk,
But of old Allfather took me from the Kings and their wedding yoke:
And he called me the Victory-Wafter, and I went and came as he would,
And I chose the slain for his war-host, and the days were glorious and
good,
Till the thoughts of my heart overcame me, and the pride of my wisdom
and speech,
And I scorned the earth-folk's Framer and the Lord of the world I must
teach:
For the death-doomed I caught from the sword, and the fated life I
slew,
And I deemed that my deeds were goodly, and that long I should do and
undo.
But Allfather came against me and the God in his wrath arose;
And he cried: 'Thou hast thought in thy folly that the Gods have
friends and foes,
That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and the
world slips back,
That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and
fashion the wrack:
Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall fall aback on thine
head;
Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed!
For the Gods are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom seen,
And the wrong that they will and must be is soon as it had not been.'

"Yet I thought: 'Shall I wed in the world, shall I gather grief on
the earth?
Then the fearless heart shall I wed, and bring the best to birth,
And fashion such tales for the telling, that Earth shall be holpen
at least,
If the Gods think scorn of its fairness, as they sit at the
changeless feast.'

"Then somewhat smiled Allfather; and he spake: 'So let it be!
The doom thereof abideth; the doom of me and thee.
Yet long shall the time pass over ere thy waking-day be born:
Fare forth, and forget and be weary 'neath the Sting of the Sleepful
Thorn!'

"So I came to the head of Hindfell and the ruddy shields and white,
And the wall of the wildfire wav