Great waxed the gloom of Regin, and he said:  “Thou sayest sooth,
    For none may turn him backward:  the sword of a very youth
    Shall one day end my cunning, as the Gods my joyance slew,
    When nought thereof they were deeming, and another thing would do. 
    But this sword shall slay the Serpent; and do another deed,
    And many an one thereafter till it fail thee in thy need. 
    But as fair and great as thou standeth, yet get thee from mine house,
    For in me too might ariseth, and the place is perilous
    With the craft that was aforetime, and shall never be again,
    When the hands that have taught thee cunning have failed from the world
      of men. 
    Thou art wroth; but thy wrath must slumber till fate its blossom bear;
    Not thus were the eyes of Odin when I held him in the snare. 
    Depart! lest the end overtake us ere thy work and mine be done,
    But come again in the night-tide and the slumber of the sun,
    When the sharded moon of April hangs round in the undark May.”

    Hither and thither a while did the heart of Sigurd sway;
    For he feared no craft of the Dwarf-kind, nor heeded the ways of Fate,
    But his hand wrought e’en as his heart would:  and now was he weary
      with hate
    Of the hatred and scorn of the Gods, and the greed of gold and of gain,
    And the weaponless hands of the stripling of the wrath and the rending
      were fain. 
    But there stood Regin the Master, and his eyes were on Sigurd’s eyes,
    Though nought belike they beheld him, and his brow was sad and wise;
    And the greed died out of his visage and he stood like an image of old.

    So the Norns drew Sigurd away, and the tide was an even of gold,
    And sweet in the April even were the fowl-kind singing their best;
    And the light of life smote Sigurd, and the joy that knows no rest,
    And the fond unnamed desire, and the hope of hidden things;
    And he wended fair and lovely to the house of the feasting Kings.

But now when the moon was at full and the undark May begun,
Went Sigurd unto Regin mid the slumber of the sun,
And amidst the fire-hall’s pavement the King of the Dwarf-kind stood
Like an image of deeds departed and days that once were good;
And he seemed but faint and weary, and his eyes were dim and dazed
As they met the glory of Sigurd where the fitful candles blazed. 
Then he spake: 
“Hail, Son of the Volsungs, the corner-stone is laid,
I have toiled and thou hast desired, and, lo, the fateful blade!”

Then Sigurd saw it lying on the ashes slaked and pale,
Like the sun and the lightning mingled mid the even’s cloudy bale,
For ruddy and great were the hilts, and the edges fine and wan,
And all adown to the blood-point a very flame there ran
That swallowed the runes of wisdom wherewith its