One more peculiar characteristic of Icelandic is admirably exhibited in this poem.  We have seen that Warton recognized in the “Runic poets” a warmth of fancy which expressed itself in “circumlocution and comparisons, not as a matter of necessity, but of choice and skill.”  Certainly Morris in using these circumlocutions in Sigurd the Volsung, has exercised remarkable skill in weaving them into his story.  Like the alliterations, they are part of an harmonious design.  Examples abound, like: 

    Adown unto the swan-bath the Volsung Children ride;

and this other for the same thing, the sea: 

    While sleepeth the fields of the fishes amidst the summer-tide.

Still others for the water are swan-mead, and “bed-gear of the swan.”

“The serpent of death” and war-flame, for sword; earth-bone, for rock; fight-sheaves, for armed hosts; seaburg, for boats, are other striking examples.

So much for the mechanical details of this poem.  Its literary features are so exceptional that we must examine them at length.

Book I is entitled “Sigmund” and the description is set at the head of it.  “In this book is told of the earlier days of the Volsungs, and of Sigmund the father of Sigurd, and of his deeds, and of how he died while Sigurd was yet unborn in his mother’s womb.”

There are many departures from the Voelsunga Saga in this poetic version, and all seem to be accounted for by a desire to impress present-day readers with this story.  The poem begins with Volsung, omitting, therefore, the marvelous birth of that king and the oath of the unborn child to “flee in fear from neither fire nor the sword.”  The saga makes the wolf kill one of Volsung’s sons every night; the poem changes the number to two.  A magnificent scene is invented by Morris in the midnight visit of Signy to the wood where her brothers had been slain.  She speaks to the brother that is left, desiring to know what he is doing: 

    O yea, I am living indeed, and this labor of mine hand
    Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well nigh done. 
    So draw near, Volsung’s daughter, and pile we many a stone
    Where lie the gray wolf s gleanings of what was once so good.

(P. 23.)

The dialogue of brother and sister is a mighty conception, and surely the old Icelanders would have called Morris a rare singer.  Sigmund tells the story of the deaths of his brothers, adding: 

But now was I wroth with the Gods, that had made the Volsungs for
nought;
And I said:  in the Day of their Doom a man’s help shall they miss.

(P. 24.)

But Signy is reconciled to the workings of Fate: 

I am nothing so wroth as thou art with the ways of death and hell,
For thereof had I a deeming when all things were seeming well.

The day to come shall set their woes right: