rd
Among the Sons of Giuki
As is the green leek
O'er the low grass waxen,
Or a hart high-limbed
Over hurrying deer,
Or gleed-red gold
Over grey silver.

That is the Icelandic fashion; William Morris has caught it in the
_Story of Sigurd_. Matthew Arnold has not seen fit to use it in his
"Balder Dead," as these lines show:

Him the blind Hoder met, as he came up
From the sea cityward, and knew his step;
Nor yet could Hermod see his brother's face,
For it grew dark; but Hermod touched his arm.
And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers
Brushes across a tired traveller's face
Who shuffles thro the deep-moistened dust,
On a May-evening, in the darkened lanes,
And starts him that he thinks a ghost went by--
So Hoder brushed by Hermod's side.

These are noble lines, but altogether foreign to Icelandic.

Book III opens with the dream of Gudrun and Brynhild's interpretation of
it. This matter is managed in accordance with our own standards of art,
and thus differs materially from the saga story. In the latter a most
naive procedure is adopted, for Brynhild prophesies that Sigurd shall
leave her for Gudrun, through Grimhild's guile, that strife shall come
between them, and that Sigurd shall die and Gudrun wed Atli. The whole
later story is thus revealed. This is not a story-teller's art, but it
sets clear the Old Norse acceptance of fate's dealings. Of course
Morris' poetic action explains the dream perfectly, but the details are
not so frankly given.

"Thou shalt live and love and lose, and mingle in murder and war," is
the gist of Brynhild's message, and the whole future history is there.

This poem has often been called an epic, and certainly there are many
epical characteristics in it. One of them is the recurrence of certain
formulas, and in Books III and IV these are rather more abundant than in
the first two books. Thus the sword of Sigurd is praised in the same
words, again and again:

It hath not its like in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told.

Then, there is the "cloudy hall-roof" of the Niblungs. Gudrun is "the
white-armed"; Grimhild is "the wisest of women"; Hogni is the
"wise-heart"; the Niblungs are "the Cloudy People"; their beds are
"blue-covered"; "the Godson the hangings" is an expression that recurs
very often, and it recalls the fact that Morris was an artisan as well
as an artist.

In the preceding books we have no