telling "How Sigurd
awoke Brynhild upon Hindfell." As in the saga, so in the English poem,
this incident has a setting most favorable to the display of its
remarkable beauties. It is a picture as pure and sweet as it has ever
entered into the mind of man to conceive. The conception belongs to the
poetic lore of many nations, and children are early introduced to the
story of "Sleeping Beauty." There are some features of the Old Norse
version that are especially charming, and first among them is the
address of the awakened Brynhild to the sun and the earth. We are told
that this maiden loved the radiant hero that here awoke her from her
age-long sleep, but not for him is her first greeting. A finer thrill
moves her than love for a man, and in Morris's poem, this feeling finds
singularly beautiful expression:

All hail O Day and thy Sons, and thy kin of the coloured things!
Hail, following Night, and thy Daughter that leadeth thy wavering
wings!
Look down with unangry eyes on us today alive,
And give us the hearts victorious, and the gain for which we strive!
All hail, ye Lords of God-home, and ye Queens of the House of Gold!
Hail thou dear Earth that bearest, and thou Wealth of field and fold!
Give us, your noble children, the glory of wisdom and speech,
And the hearts and the hands of healing, and the mouths and hands that
teach!

(P. 140.)

In order to see just what the art of Morris has done for this poem, let
us compare this address with the rendering of the _Sigrdrifumal_, which
tell the same story and which Morris and Magnusson have incorporated
into their translation of the _Voelsunga Saga_. The verses are not in the
original saga:

Hail to the day come back!
Hail, sons of the daylight!
Hail to thee, dark night, and thy daughter!
Look with kind eyes a-down,
On us sitting here lonely,
And give unto us the gain that we long for.
Hail to the AEsir,
And the sweet Asyniur!
Hail to the fair earth fulfilled of plenty!
Fair words, wise hearts,
Would we win from you,
And healing hands while life we hold.

To get the full benefit of the comparison of the old and the new, let us
set in conjunction with these versions a severely literal translation of
the _Edda_ strophes themselves:

Hail, O Day,
Hail, O Sons of the Day,
Hail Night and kinswoman!
With unwroth eyes
look on