h and his desire.
And she thought: "Alone I will bear it; alone I will take the crime;
On me alone be the shaming, and the cry of the coming time.
Yea, and he for the life is fated and the help of many a folk,
And I for the death and the rest, and deliverance from the yoke."

Then wan as the midnight moon she answered the woman and spake:
"Thou art come to the Goth-queen's dwelling, wilt thou do so much
for my sake,
And for many a pound of silver and for rings of the ruddy gold,
As to change thy body for mine ere the night is waxen old?"

Nought the witch-wife fair gainsaid it, and they went to the bower
aloft
And hand in hand and alone they sung the spell-song soft:
Till Signy looked on her guest, and lo, the face of a queen
With the steadfast eyes of grey, that so many a grief had seen:
But the guest held forth a mirror, and Signy shrank aback
From the laughing lips and the eyes, and the hair of crispy black,
But though she shuddered and sickened, the false face changed no whit;
But ruddy and white it blossomed and the smiles played over it;
And the hands were ready to cling, and beckoning lamps were the eyes,
And the light feet longed for the dance, and the lips for laughter
and lies.

So that eve in the mid-hall's high-seat was the shape of Signy the
Queen,
While swiftly the feet of the witch-wife brushed over the moonlit
green,
But the soul mid the gleam of the torches, her thought was of gain
and of gold;
And the soul of the wind-driven woman, swift-foot in the moonlight
cold,
Her thoughts were of men's lives' changing, and the uttermost ending
of earth,
And the day when death should be dead, and the new sun's nightless
birth.

Men say that about that midnight King Sigmund wakened and heard
The voice of a soft-speeched woman, shrill-sweet as a dawning bird;
So he rose, and a woman indeed he saw by the door of the cave
With her raiment wet to her midmost, as though with the river-wave:
And he cried: "What wilt thou, what wilt thou? be thou womankind or
fay,
Here is no good abiding, wend forth upon thy way!"

She said: "I am nought but a woman, a maid of the earl-folk's kin:
And I went by the skirts of the woodland to the house of my sister
to win,
And have strayed from the way benighted: and I fear the wolves