So wendeth his way on the morrow that Earl of the Gothland King,
    Bearing the gifts and the gold, and King Volsung’s tokening,
    And a word in his mouth moreover, a word of blessing and hail,
    And a bidding to King Siggeir to come ere the June-tide fail
    And wed him to white-hand Signy and bear away his bride,
    While sleepeth the field of the fishes amidst the summer-tide.

    So on Mid-Summer Even ere the undark night began
    Siggeir the King of the Goth-folk went up from the bath of the swan
    Unto the Volsung dwelling with many an Earl about;
    There through the glimmering thicket the linked mail rang out,
    And sang as mid the woodways sings the summer-hidden ford: 
    There were gold-rings God-fashioned, and many a Dwarf-wrought sword,
    And many a Queen-wrought kirtle and many a written spear;
    So came they to the acres, and drew the threshold near,
    And amidst of the garden blossoms, on the grassy, fruit-grown land,
    Was Volsung the King of the Wood-world with his sons on either hand;
    Therewith down lighted Siggeir the lord of a mighty folk,
    Yet showed he by King Volsung as the bramble by the oak,
    Nor reached his helm to the shoulder of the least of Volsung’s sons. 
    And so into the hall they wended, the Kings and their mighty ones;
    And they dight the feast full glorious, and drank through the
      death of the day,
    Till the shadowless moon rose upward, till it wended white away;
    Then they went to the gold-hung beds, and at last for an hour or twain
    Were all things still and silent, save a flaw of the summer rain.

    But on the morrow noontide when the sun was high and bare,
    More glorious was the banquet, and now was Signy there,
    And she sat beside King Siggeir, a glorious bride forsooth;
    Ruddy and white was she wrought as the fair-stained sea-beast’s tooth,
    But she neither laughed nor spake, and her eyes were hard and cold,
    And with wandering side-long looks her lord would she behold. 
    That saw Sigmund her brother, the eldest Volsung son,
    And oft he looked upon her, and their eyes met now and anon,
    And ruth arose in his heart, and hate of Siggeir the Goth,
    And there had he broken the wedding, but for plighted promise and
      troth. 
    But those twain were beheld of Siggeir, and he deemed of the
      Volsung kin,
    That amid their might and their malice small honour should he win;
    Yet thereof made he no semblance, but abided times to be
    And laughed out with the loudest, amid the hope and the glee. 
    And nought of all saw Volsung, as he dreamed of the coming glory,
    And how the Kings of his kindred should fashion the round world’s
      story.