from the hall of Brynhild the queen
When the days of the Niblungs blossomed and their hope was springing
green.

_How the folk of Lymdale met Sigurd the Volsung in the woodland._

Full fair was the land of Lymdale, and great were the men thereof,
And Heimir the King of the people was held in marvellous love;
And his wife was the sister of Brynhild, and the Queen of Queens was
she;
And his sons were noble striplings, and his daughters sweet to see;
And all these lived on in joyance through the good days and the ill,
Nor would shun the war's awaking; but now that the war was still
They looked to the wethers' fleeces and what the ewes would yield,
And led their bulls from the straw-stall, and drave their kine afield;
And they dealt with mere and river and all waters of their land,
And cast the glittering angle, and drew the net to the strand,
And searched the rattling shallows, and many a rock-walled well,
Where the silver-scaled sea-farers, and the crook-lipped bull-trout
dwell.
But most when their hearts were merry 'twas the joy of carle and quean
To ride in the deeps of the oak-wood, and the thorny thicket green:
Forth go their hearts before them to the blast of the strenuous horn,
Where the level sun comes dancing down the oaks in the early morn:
There they strain and strive for the quarry, when the wind hath fallen
dead
In the odorous dusk of the pine-wood, and the noon is high o'erhead:
There oft with horns triumphant their rout by the lone tree turns,
When over the bison's lea-land the last of sunset burns;
Or by night and cloud all eager with shaft on string they fare,
When the wind from the elk-mead setteth, or the wood-boar's tangled
lair:
For the wood is their barn and their storehouse, and their bower and
feasting-hall,
And many an one of their warriors in the woodland war shall fall.

So now in the sweet spring season, on a morn of the sunny tide
Abroad are the Lymdale people to the wood-deers' house to ride:
And they wend towards the sun's uprising, and over the boughs he comes,
And the merry wind is with him, and stirs the woodland homes;
But their horns to his face cast clamour, and their hooves shake down
the glades,
And the hearts of their hounds are eager, and oft they redden blades;
Till at last in the noon they tarry in a d