men?"

She said: "Woe worth the while for the word that hath come from thy
mouth!
As the bitter weltering ocean to the shipman dying of drouth,
E'en so is the life thou biddest, since thou pitiedst not thine own,
Nor thy love, nor the hope of thy life-days, but must dwell as a glory
alone!"

"It is truer to tell," said Sigurd, "that mine heart in thy love was
enwrapped
Till the evil hour of the darkening, and the eyeless tangle had happed:
And thereof shalt thou know, O Brynhild, on one day better than I,
When the stroke of the sword hath been smitten, and the night hath
seen me die:
Then belike in thy fresh-springing wisdom thou shalt know of the dark
and the deed,
And the snare for our feet fore-ordered from whence they shall never
be freed.
But for me, in the net I awakened and the toils that unwitting I wove,
And no tongue may tell of the sorrow that I had for thy wedded love:
But I dwelt in the dwelling of kings; so I thrust its seeming apart
And I laboured the field of Odin: and e'en this was a joy to my heart,
That we dwelt in one house together, though a stranger's house it
were."

"O late, and o'erlate!" cried Brynhild--"may the dead folk hearken
and hear?
All was and today it is not--And the Oath unto Gunnar is sworn,
Shall I live the days twice over, and the life thou hast made forlorn?"

And she heard the words of Hindfell and the oath of the earlier day,
Till the daylight darkened before her, and all memory passed away,
And she cried: "I may live no longer, for the Gods have forgotten the
earth,
And my heart is the forge of sorrow, and my life is a wasting dearth."

Then once again spake Sigurd, once only and no more:
A pillar of light all golden he stood on the sunlit floor;
And his eyes were the eyes of Odin, and his face was the hope of the
world,
And his voice was the thunder of even when the bolt o'er the mountains
is hurled:
The fairest of all things fashioned he stood 'twixt life and death,
And the Wrath of Regin rattled, and the rings of the Glittering Heath,
As he cried:
"I am Sigurd the Volsung, and belike the tale shall be true
That no hand on the earth may hinder what my hand would fashion and do:
And what God or what man shall gainsay it if our love be greater than
t