The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century

THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG.

1877.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

(FROM BOOK I.-SIGMUND).

THEN in the grave-mound's darkness did Sigmund the king upstand,

And unto that saw of battle he set his naked hand; And hard the gift of Odin home to their breasts they drew;

Sawed Sigmund, sawed Sinfiotli, till the stone was cleft atwo,

And they met and kissed together: then they hewed and heaved full hard

Till lo, through the bursten rafters the winter heavens bestarred!

And they leap out merry-hearted; nor is there need

to say

A many words between them of whither was the

way.

For they took the night-watch sleeping, and slew them one and all,

And then on the winter fagots they make them haste to fall,

They pile the oak-trees cloven, and when the oakbeams fail

They bear the ash and the rowan, and build a mighty

bale

About the dwelling of Siggeir, and lay the torch therein.

Then they drew their swords and watched it till the flames began to win

Hard on to the mid-hall's rafters, and those feasters of the folk,

As the fire-flakes fell among them, to their last of days awoke.

By the gable-door stood Sigmund and fierce Sinfiotli

stood

Red-lit by the door of the women in the lane of blazing wood:

To death each doorway opened, and death was in the hall.

Then amid the gathered Goth-folk 'gan Siggeir the king to call:

"Who lit the fire I burn in, and what shall buy me peace ?

Will ye take my heaped-up treasure, or ten years of my fields' increase,

Or half of my father's kingdom? O toilers at the oar, O wasters of the sea-plain, now labour ye no more! But take the gifts I bid you, and lie upon the gold, And clothe your limbs in purple and the silken women hold!"

But a great voice cried o'er the fire: "Nay no such

men are we,

No tuggers at the hawser, no wasters of the sea: We will have the gold and the purple when we list

such things to win;

But now we think on our fathers, and avenging of our kin.

Not all King Siggeir's kingdom, and not all the world's increase

For ever and for ever, shall buy thee life and peace. For now is the tree-bough blossomed that sprang from murder's seed;

And the death-doomed and the buried are they that do the deed;

Now when the dead shall ask thee by whom thy days were done,

Thou shalt say by Sigmund the Volsung, and Sinfiotli, Signy's son."

Then stark fear fell on the earl-folk, and silent they abide

Amid the flaming penfold;, and again the great voice

cried,

As the Goth-king's golden pillars grew red amidst the

blaze:

"Ye women of the Goth-folk come forth upon your

ways;

And thou, Signy, O my sister, come forth from death and hell,

That beneath the boughs of the Branstock once more we twain may dwell."

Forth came the white-faced women and passed Sinfiotli's sword,

Free by the glaive of Odin the trembling pale ones poured,

But amid their hurrying terror came never Signy's

feet;

And the pearls of the throne of Siggeir shrunk in the fervent heat.

Then the men of war surged outward to the twofold doors of bane,

But there played the sword of Sigmund amidst the fiery lane

Before the gable door-way, and by the woman's door

Sinfiotli sang to the sword-edge amid the bale-fire's

roar,

And back again to the burning the earls of the Gothfolk shrank:

And the light low licked the tables, and the wine of Siggeir drank.

Lo now to the woman's doorway, the steel-watched bower of flame,

Clad in her queenly raiment King Volsung's daughter

came

Before Sinfiotli's sword-point; and she said: "O mightiest son,

Best now is our departing in the day my grief hath

won,

And the many days of toiling, and the travail of my

womb,

And the hate, and the fire of longing: thou, son, and this day of the doom

Have long been as one to my heart; and now shall I leave you both,

And well ye may wot of the slumber my heart is nothing loth;

And all the more, as, meseemeth, thy day shall not

be long

To weary thee with labour and mingle wrong with

wrong.