Then Sigurd looked on the slayer, and never a word would speak: 
    Gemmed were the hilts and golden, and the blade was blue and bleak,
    And runes of the Dwarf-kind’s cunning each side the trench were scored: 
    But soft and sweet spake Regin:  “How likest thou the sword?”

    Then Sigurd laughed and answered:  “The work is proved by the deed;
    See now if this be a traitor to fail me in my need.”

    Then Regin trembled and shrank, so bright his eyes outshone
    As he turned about to the anvil, and smote the sword thereon;
    But the shards fell shivering earthward, and Sigurd’s heart grew wroth
    As the steel-flakes tinkled about him:  “Lo, there the right-hand’s
      troth! 
    Lo, there the golden glitter, and the word that soon is spilt.” 
    And down amongst the ashes he cast the glittering hilt,
    And turned his back on Regin and strode out through the door,
    And for many a day of spring-tide came back again no more. 
    But at last he came to the stithy and again took up the word: 
    “What hast thou done, O Master, in the forging of the sword?”

    Then sweetly Regin answered:  “Hard task-master art thou,
    But lo, a blade of battle that shall surely please thee now! 
    Two moons are clean departed since thou lookedst toward the sky
    And sawest the dim white circle amid the cloud-flecks lie;
    And night and day have I laboured; and the cunning of old days
    Hath surely left my right-hand if this sword thou shalt not praise.”

    And indeed the hilts gleamed glorious with many a dear-bought stone,
    And down the fallow edges the light of battle shone;
    Yet Sigurd’s eyes shone brighter, nor yet might Regin face
    Those eyes of the heart of the Volsungs; but trembled in his place
    As Sigurd cried:  “O Regin, thy kin of the days of old
    Were an evil and treacherous folk, and they lied and murdered for gold;
    And now if thou wouldst betray me, of the ancient curse beware,
    And set thy face as the flint the bale and the shame to bear: 
    For he that would win to the heavens, and be as the Gods on high,
    Must tremble nought at the road, and the place where men-folk die.”

    White leaps the blade in his hand and gleams in the gear of the wall,
    And he smites, and the oft-smitten edges on the beaten anvil fall: 
    But the life of the sword departed, and dull and broken it lay
    On the ashes and flaked-off iron, and no word did Sigurd say,
    But strode off through the door of the stithy and went to the Hall of
      Kings,
    And was merry and blithe that even mid all imaginings.