Now again in a half-month’s wearing goes Signy into the wild,
    And findeth her way by her wisdom to the dwelling of Volsung’s child. 
    It was e’en as a house of the Dwarfs, a rock, and a stony cave. 
    In the heart of the midmost thicket by the hidden river’s wave. 
    There Signy found him watching how the white-head waters ran,
    And she said in her heart as she saw him that once more she had seen
      a man. 
    His words were few and heavy, for seldom his sorrow slept,
    Yet ever his love went with them; and men say that Signy wept
    When she left that last of her kindred:  yet wept she never more
    Amid the earls of Siggeir, and as lovely as before
    Was her face to all men’s deeming:  nor aught it changed for ruth,
    Nor for fear nor any longing; and no man said for sooth
    That she ever laughed thereafter till the day of her death was come.

    So is Volsung’s seed abiding in a rough and narrow home;
    And wargear he gat him enough from the slaying of earls of men,
    And gold as much as he would; though indeed but now and again
    He fell on the men of the merchants, lest, wax he overbold,
    The tale of the wood-abider too oft to the king should be told. 
    Alone in the woods he abided, and a master of masters was he
    In the craft of the smithying folk; and whiles would the hunter see,
    Belated amid the thicket, his forge’s glimmering light,
    And the boldest of all the fishers would hear his hammer benight. 
    Then dim waxed the tale of the Volsungs, and the word mid the
      wood-folk rose
    That a King of the Giants had wakened from amidst the stone-hedged
      close,
    Where they slept in the heart of the mountains, and had come adown
      to dwell
    In the cave whence the Dwarfs were departed, and they said:  It is
      aught but well
    To come anigh to his house-door, or wander wide in his woods? 
    For a tyrannous lord he is, and a lover of gold and of goods.

So win the long years over, and still sitteth Signy there
Beside the King of the Goth-folk, and is waxen no less fair,
And men and maids hath she gotten who are ready to work her will,
For the worship of her fairness, and remembrance of her ill.

So it fell on a morn of springtide, as Sigmund sat on the sward
By that ancient house of the Dwarf-kind and fashioned a golden sword? 
By the side of the hidden river he saw a damsel stand,
And a manchild of ten summers was holding by her hand. 
And she cried: 
“O Forest-dweller! harm not the child nor me,
For I bear a word of Signy’s, and thus she saith to thee: 
’I send thee a man to foster; if his heart be good at need
Then may he help thy workday; but hearken my words and heed;
If thou deem that his heart shall avail not, thy work is over-great
That thou weary thy heart with such-like:  let him wend the ways of
his fate.’”