Now amidst those days that she pondered came a wife of the
      witch-folk there,
    A woman young and lovesome, and shaped exceeding fair,
    And she spake with Signy the Queen, and told her of deeds of her craft,
    And how the might was with her her soul from her body to waft
    And to take the shape of another and give her fashion in turn. 
    Fierce then in the heart of Signy a sudden flame ’gan burn,
    And the eyes of her soul saw all things, like the blind, whom the
      world’s last fire
    Hath healed in one passing moment ’twixt his death and his desire. 
    And she thought:  “Alone I will bear it; alone I will take the crime;
    On me alone be the shaming, and the cry of the coming time. 
    Yea, and he for the life is fated and the help of many a folk,
    And I for the death and the rest, and deliverance from the yoke.”

    Then wan as the midnight moon she answered the woman and spake: 
    “Thou art come to the Goth-queen’s dwelling, wilt thou do so much
      for my sake,
    And for many a pound of silver and for rings of the ruddy gold,
    As to change thy body for mine ere the night is waxen old?”

    Nought the witch-wife fair gainsaid it, and they went to the bower
      aloft
    And hand in hand and alone they sung the spell-song soft: 
    Till Signy looked on her guest, and lo, the face of a queen
    With the steadfast eyes of grey, that so many a grief had seen: 
    But the guest held forth a mirror, and Signy shrank aback
    From the laughing lips and the eyes, and the hair of crispy black,
    But though she shuddered and sickened, the false face changed no whit;
    But ruddy and white it blossomed and the smiles played over it;
    And the hands were ready to cling, and beckoning lamps were the eyes,
    And the light feet longed for the dance, and the lips for laughter
      and lies.

    So that eve in the mid-hall’s high-seat was the shape of Signy the
      Queen,
    While swiftly the feet of the witch-wife brushed over the moonlit
      green,
    But the soul mid the gleam of the torches, her thought was of gain
      and of gold;
    And the soul of the wind-driven woman, swift-foot in the moonlight
      cold,
    Her thoughts were of men’s lives’ changing, and the uttermost ending
      of earth,
    And the day when death should be dead, and the new sun’s nightless
      birth.

    Men say that about that midnight King Sigmund wakened and heard
    The voice of a soft-speeched woman, shrill-sweet as a dawning bird;
    So he rose, and a woman indeed he saw by the door of the cave
    With her raiment wet to her midmost, as though with the river-wave: 
    And he cried:  “What wilt thou, what wilt thou? be thou womankind or
      fay,
    Here is no good abiding, wend forth upon thy way!”