l be, when the reaping-hook gleams grey,
And the knees of the strong are loosened in the afternoon of day?
Who knows of the joy that shall be, when the reaper cometh again,
And his sheaves are crowned with the blossoms, and the song goes up
from the wain?
But now let the Gods look to it, to hinder or to speed!
But the love and the longing I know, and I know the hand and the deed."

And he gathered the reins together, and set his face to the road,
And the glad steed neighed beneath him as they fared from the King's
abode,
And out past the dewy closes; but the shouts went up to the sky,
Though some for very sorrow forbore the farewell cry,
Nor was any man but heavy that the godlike guest should go;
And they craved for that glad heart guileless, and that face without
a foe.
But Greyfell fareth onward, and back to the dusky hall
Now goeth the ancient Heimir, and back to bower and stall,
And back to hammer and shuttle go earl and carle and quean;
And piping in the noontide adown the hollows green
Go the yellow-headed shepherds amidst the scattered sheep;
And all hearts a dear remembrance and a hope of Sigurd keep.

But forth by dale and lealand doth the Son of Sigmund wend,
Till far away lies Lymdale and the folk of the forest's end;
And he rides a heath unpeopled and holds the westward way,
Till a long way off before him come up the mountains grey;
Grey, huge beyond all telling, and the host of the heaped clouds,
The black and the white together, on that rock-wall's coping crowds;
But whiles are rents athwart them, and the hot sun pierceth through,
And there glow the angry cloud-caves 'gainst the everlasting blue,
And the changeless snow amidst it; but down from that cloudy head
The scars of fires that have been show grim and dusky-red;
And lower yet are the hollows striped down by the scanty green,
And lingering flecks of the cloud-host are tangled there-between,
White, pillowy, lit by the sun, unchanged by the drift of the wind.

Long Sigurd looked and marvelled, and up-raised his heart and his mind;
For he deemed that beyond that rock-wall bode his changed love and life
On the further side of the battle, and the hope, and the shifting
strife:
So up and down he rideth, till at even of the day
A hill's brow he o'ertoppeth that had hid the mountains grey;