But when the morrow was come he went to his mother and spake: 
    “The shards, the shards of the sword, that thou gleanedst for my sake
    In the night on the field of slaughter, in the tide when my father
      fell,
    Hast thou kept them through sorrow and joyance? hast thou warded them
      trusty and well? 
    Where hast thou laid them, my mother?”
                                        Then she looked upon him and said: 
    “Art thou wroth, O Sigurd my son, that such eyes are in thine head? 
    And wilt thou be wroth with thy mother? do I withstand thee at all?”

    “Nay,” said he, “nought am I wrathful, but the days rise up like a wall
    Betwixt my soul and the deeds, and I strive to rend them through. 
    And why wilt thou fear mine eyen? as the sword lies baleful and blue
    E’en ’twixt the lips of lovers, when they swear their troth thereon,
    So keen are the eyes ye have fashioned, ye folk of the days agone;
    For therein is the light of battle, though whiles it lieth asleep. 
    Now give me the sword, my mother, that Sigmund gave thee to keep.”

    She said:  “I shall give it thee gladly, for fain shall I be of thy
      praise
    When thou knowest my careful keeping of that hope of the earlier days.”

    So she took his hand in her hand, and they went their ways, they twain;
    Till they came to the treasure of queen-folk, the guarded chamber of
      gain: 
    They were all alone with its riches, and she turned the key in the
      gold,
    And lifted the sea-born purple, and the silken web unrolled,
    And lo, ’twixt her hands and her bosom the shards of Sigmund’s sword;
    No rust-fleck stained its edges, and the gems of the ocean’s hoard
    Were as bright in the hilts and glorious, as when in the Volsungs’ hall
    It shone in the eyes of the earl-folk and flashed from the shielded
      wall.

    But Sigurd smiled upon it, and he said:  “O Mother of Kings,
    Well hast thou warded the war-glaive for a mirror of many things,
    And a hope of much fulfilment:  well hast thou given to me
    The message of my fathers, and the word of thing to be: 
    Trusty hath been thy warding, but its hour is over now: 
    These shards shall be knit together, and shall hear the war-wind blow. 
    They shall shine through the rain of Odin, as the sun come back to
      the world,
    When the heaviest bolt of the thunder amidst the storm is hurled: 
    They shall shake the thrones of Kings, and shear the walls of war,
    And undo the knot of treason when the world is darkening o’er. 
    They have shone in the dusk and the night-tide, they shall shine in
      the dawn and the day;
    They have gathered the storm together, they shall chase the clouds
      away;
    They have sheared red gold asunder, they shall gleam o’er the garnered