“There is no man left on the tree-beam:  some beast hath devoured thy
      foes;
    There is nought left there but the bones, and the bonds that the
      Volsungs bound.”

    No word spake the earls of the Goth-folk, but the hall rang out with
      a sound,
    With the wail and the cry of Signy, as she stood upright on her feet,
    And thrust all people from her, and fled to her bower as fleet
    As the hind when she first is smitten; and her maidens fled away,
    Fearing her face and her eyen:  no less at the death of the day
    She rose up amid the silence, and went her ways alone,
    And no man watched her or hindered, for they deemed the story done. 
    So she went ’twixt the yellow acres, and the green meads of the sheep,
    And or ever she reached the wild-wood the night was waxen deep
    No man she had to lead her, but the path was trodden well
    By those messengers of murder, the men with the tale to tell;
    And the beams of the high white moon gave a glimmering day through
      night
    Till she came where that lawn of the woods lay wide in the flood of
      light. 
    Then she looked, and lo, in its midmost a mighty man there stood,
    And laboured the earth of the green-sward with a truncheon torn from
      the wood;
    And behold, it was Sigmund the Volsung:  but she cried and had no fear: 

    “If thou art living, Sigmund, what day’s work dost thou here
    In the midnight and the forest? but if thou art nought but a ghost,
    Then where are those Volsung brethren, of whom thou wert best and
      most?”

    Then he turned about unto her, and his raiment was fouled and torn,
    And his eyen were great and hollow, as a famished man forlorn;

    But he cried:  “Hail, Sister Signy!  I looked for thee before,
    Though what should a woman compass, she one alone and no more,
    When all we shielded Volsungs did nought in Siggeir’s land? 
    O yea, I am living indeed, and this labour 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 grey wolf’s gleanings of what was once so good.”

    So she set her hand to the labour, and they toiled, they twain in
      the wood
    And when the work was over, dead night was beginning to fail: 
    Then spake the white-hand Signy:  “Now shalt thou tell the tale
    Of the death of the Volsung brethren ere the wood thy wrath shall hide,
    Ere I wend me back sick-hearted in the dwelling of kings to abide.”