ing he rides the flowery sward
Betwixt the woodland dwellings and the house of Lymdale's lord;
And he hearkens Greyfell's going as he wends adown the lea,
And his heart for love is craving, and the deeds he deems shall be;
And he hears the Wrath's sheath tinkling as he rides the daisies down
And he thinks of his love laid safely in the arms of his renown.
But lo, as he rides the meadows, before him now he sees
A builded burg arising amid the leafy trees,
And a white-walled house on its topmost with a golden roof-ridge done,
And thereon the clustering dove-kind in the brightness of the sun.
So Sigurd stayed to behold it, for the heart within him laughed,
But e'en then, as the arrow speedeth from the mighty archer's draught,
Forth fled the falcon unhooded from the hand of Sigurd the King,
And up, and over the tree-boughs he shot with steady wing:
Then the Volsung followed his flight, for he looked to see him fall
On the fluttering folk of the doves, and he cried the backward call
Full oft and over again; but the falcon heeded it nought,
Nor turned to his kingly wrist-perch, nor the folk of the pigeons
sought,
But flew up to a high-built tower, and sat in the window a space,
Crying out like the fowl of Odin when the first of the morning they
face,
And then passed through the open casement as an erne to his eyrie goes.

Much marvelled the Son of Sigmund, and rode to the fruitful close:
For he said: Here a great one dwelleth, though none have told me
thereof,
And he shall give me my falcon, and his fellowship and love.
So he came to the gate of the garth, and forth to the hall-door rode,
And leapt adown from Greyfell, and entered that fair abode;
For full lovely was it fashioned, and great was the pillared hall,
And fair in its hangings were woven the deeds that Kings befall,
And the merry sun went through it and gleamed in gold and horn;
But afield or a-fell are its carles, and none labour there that morn,
And void it is of the maidens, and they weave in the bower aloft,
Or they go in the outer gardens 'twixt the rose and the lily soft:
So saith Sigurd the Volsung, and a door in the corner he spies
With knots of gold fair-carven, and the graver's masteries:
So he lifts the latch and it opens, and he comes to a marble stair,
And aloft by the same he goeth through a to