of girls
  For heroisms and profitless loftiness
  We shall get gone when bedtime clears the house. 
  ’T is much to have to be a hero’s wife,
  And I shall wonder if Hallgerd cares about it: 
  Yet she may kindle to it ere my heart quickens. 
  I tell you, women, we have no duty here: 
  Let us get gone to-night while there is time,
  And find new harbouring ere the laggard dawn,
  For death is making narrowing passages
  About this hushed and terrifying house.

  (RANNVEIG, an old wimpled woman, enters as if from a door at the
  unseen end of the hall.)

                        ASTRID
  He is so great and manly, our master Gunnar,
  There are not many ready to meet his weapons: 
  And so there may not be much need of weapons. 
  He is so noble and clear, so swift and tender,
  So much of Iceland’s fame in foreign places,
  That too many love him, too many honour him
  To let him die, lest the most gleaming glory
  Of our grey country should be there put out.

                        RANNVEIG
  Girl, girl, my son has many enemies
  Who will not lose the joy of hurting him. 
  This little land is no more than a lair
  That holds too many fiercenesses too straitly,
  And no man will refuse the rapture of killing
  When outlawry has made it cheap and righteous. 
  So long as anyone perceives he knows
  A bare place for a weapon on my son
  His hand shall twitch to fit a weapon in. 
  Indeed he shall lose nothing but his life
  Because a woman is made so evil fair,
  Wasteful and white and proud in harmful acts. 
  I lose two sons when Gunnar’s eyes are still,
  For then will Kolskegg never more turn home.... 
  If Gunnar would but sail, three years would pass;
  Only three years of banishment said the doom—­
  So few, so few, for I can last ten years
  With this unshrunken body and steady heart.

  (To ORMILD)

  Have I sat down in comfort by the fire
  And waited to be told the thing I knew? 
  Have any men come home to the young women,
  Thinking old women do not need to hear,
  That you can play at being a bower-maid
  In a long gown although no beasts are foddered? 
  Up, lass, and get thy coats about thy knees,
  For we must cleanse the byre and heap the midden
  Before the master knows—­or he will go,
  And there is peril for him in every darkness.

      ORMILD (tucking up her skirts)
  Then are we out of peril in the darkness? 
  We should do better to nail up the doors
  Each night and all night long and sleep through it,
  Giving the cattle meat and straw by day.

                        ODDNY
  Ay, and the hungry cattle should sing us to sleep.

(The others laugh.  ORMILD goes out to the left; RANNVEIG is following her, but pauses at the sound of a voice.)