The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs | Page 3

from the bath of the swan Unto the Volsung
dwelling with many an Earl about;
There through the glimmering
thicket the linkèd mail rang out, And sang as mid the woodways sings
the summer-hidden ford: There were gold-rings God-fashioned, and
many a Dwarf-wrought sword, And many a Queen-wrought kirtle and
many a written spear; So came they to the acres, and drew the threshold
near, And amidst of the garden blossoms, on the grassy, fruit-grown
land, Was Volsung the King of the Wood-world with his sons on either
hand; Therewith down lighted Siggeir the lord of a mighty folk, Yet
showed he by King Volsung as the bramble by the oak, Nor reached his
helm to the shoulder of the least of Volsung's sons. And so into the hall
they wended, the Kings and their mighty ones; And they dight the feast
full glorious, and drank through the death of the day,
Till the
shadowless moon rose upward, till it wended white away; Then they

went to the gold-hung beds, and at last for an hour or twain Were all
things still and silent, save a flaw of the summer rain.
But on the morrow noontide when the sun was high and bare, More
glorious was the banquet, and now was Signy there, And she sat beside
King Siggeir, a glorious bride forsooth; Ruddy and white was she
wrought as the fair-stained sea-beast's tooth, But she neither laughed
nor spake, and her eyes were hard and cold, And with wandering
side-long looks her lord would she behold. That saw Sigmund her
brother, the eldest Volsung son,
And oft he looked upon her, and their
eyes met now and anon, And ruth arose in his heart, and hate of Siggeir
the Goth, And there had he broken the wedding, but for plighted
promise and troth.
But those twain were beheld of Siggeir, and he
deemed of the Volsung kin,
That amid their might and their malice
small honour should he win; Yet thereof made he no semblance, but
abided times to be And laughed out with the loudest, amid the hope and
the glee. And nought of all saw Volsung, as he dreamed of the coming
glory, And how the Kings of his kindred should fashion the round
world's story.
So round about the Branstock they feast in the gleam of the gold; And
though the deeds of man-folk were not yet waxen old, Yet had they
tales for songcraft, and the blossomed garth of rhyme; Tales of the
framing of all things and the entering in of time From the halls of the
outer heaven; so near they knew the door. Wherefore uprose a sea-king,
and his hands that loved the oar Now dealt with the rippling harp-gold,
and he sang of the shaping of earth,
And how the stars were lighted,
and where the winds had birth, And the gleam of the first of summers
on the yet untrodden grass. But e'en as men's hearts were hearkening
some heard the thunder pass O'er the cloudless noontide heaven; and
some men turned about And deemed that in the doorway they heard a
man laugh out. Then into the Volsung dwelling a mighty man there
strode, One-eyed and seeming ancient, yet bright his visage glowed:
Cloud-blue was the hood upon him, and his kirtle gleaming-grey As the
latter morning sundog when the storm is on the way: A bill he bore on
his shoulder, whose mighty ashen beam Burnt bright with the flame of
the sea and the blended silver's gleam. And such was the guise of his

raiment as the Volsung elders had told Was borne by their fathers'
fathers, and the first that warred in the wold.
So strode he to the Branstock nor greeted any lord,
But forth from his
cloudy raiment he drew a gleaming sword, And smote it deep in the
tree-bole, and the wild hawks overhead Laughed 'neath the naked
heaven as at last he spake and said: "Earls of the Goths, and Volsungs,
abiders on the earth, Lo there amid the Branstock a blade of plenteous
worth! The folk of the war-wand's forgers wrought never better steel
Since first the burg of heaven uprose for man-folk's weal. Now let the
man among you whose heart and hand may shift To pluck it from the
oakwood e'en take it for my gift.
Then ne'er, but his own heart falter,
its point and edge shall fail Until the night's beginning and the ending
of the tale. Be merry Earls of the Goth-folk, O Volsung Sons be wise,
And reap the battle-acre that ripening for you lies:
For they told me in
the wild wood, I heard on the mountain side, That the shining house of
heaven is wrought exceeding wide, And that there the Early-comers
shall have abundant rest While Earth grows scant of great ones, and