that grief and rage and sin
Was ever wrought; but wondering most of all
Why such wild passion on his heart should fall.

(P. 294.)

Here we have the poet's conception--and the sagaman's--of Bodli--a man
in the grip of terrible Fate, who can no more swerve from the paths she
marks out for him than he can add a cubit to his stature. The Greek
tragedy embodies this idea, and Old Norse literature is full of it.
Thomas Hardy gives it later in his contemporary novels. We sympathize
with Bodli's fate because his agony is so terrible, and we call him the
most striking figure in this story. But the others suffer, too, Gudrun,
Kiartan, Refna; they make a stand against their woe, and utter brave
words in the face of it. Only Bodli floats downward with the tide,
unresisting. Guest prophesies bitter things for Gudrun, but adds:

Be merry yet! these things shall not be all
That unto thee in this thy life shall fall.

(P. 254.)

And Gudrun takes heart. When Thurid tells her brother Kiartan that
Gudrun has married another, his joy is shivered into atoms before him.
But he can say, even then:

Now is this world clean changed for me
In this last minute, yet indeed I see
That still it will go on for all my pain;
Come then, my sister, let us back again;
I must meet folk, and face the life beyond,
And, as I may, walk 'neath the dreadful bond
Of ugly pain--such men our fathers were,
Not lightly bowed by any weight of care.

(P. 311.)

And Kiartan does his work in the world. Poor Refna, when she has married
Kiartan hears women talking of the love that still is between Gudrun and
Kiartan. She goes to Kiartan with the story, beginning with words whose
pathos must conquer the most stoical of readers:

Indeed of all thy grief I knew,
But deemed if still thou saw'st me kind and true,
Not asking too much, yet not failing aught
To show that not far off need love be sought,
If thou shouldst need love--if thou sawest all this,
Thou wouldst not grudge to show me what a bliss
Thy whole love was, by giving unto me
As unto one who loved thee silently,
Now and again the broken crumbs thereof:
Alas! I, having then no part in love,
Knew not how naught, naught can allay the soul
Of that sad thirst, but love untouched and whole!
Kinder than e'er I durst have hoped thou art,
Forgive me then, that yet my craving heart
Is so unsatis