Then Regin turned and beheld him:  “Thou shalt deem it hard and strange,
    When the hand hath encompassed it all, and yet thy life must change. 
    Ah, long were the lives of men-folk, if betwixt the Gods and them
    Were mighty warders watching mid the earth’s and the heaven’s hem! 
    Is there any man so mighty he would cast this gift away,—­
    The heart’s desire accomplished, and life so long a day,
    That the dawn should be forgotten ere the even was begun?”

    Then Sigurd laughed and answered:  “Fare forth, O glorious sun;
    Bright end from bright beginning, and the mid-way good to tell,
    And death, and deeds accomplished, and all remembered well! 
    Shall the day go past and leave us, and we be left with night,
    To tread the endless circle, and strive in vain to smite? 
    But thou—­wilt thou still look backward? thou sayst I know thy thought: 
    Thou hast whetted the sword for the slaying, it shall turn aside for
      nought. 
    Fear not! with the Gold and the wisdom thou shalt deem thee God alone,
    And mayst do and undo at pleasure, nor be bound by right nor wrong: 
    And then, if no God I be waxen, I shall be the weak with the strong.”

    And his war-gear clanged and tinkled as he leapt to the saddle-stead: 
    And the sun rose up at their backs and the grey world changed to red,
    And away to the west went Sigurd by the glory wreathed about,
    But little and black was Regin as a fire that dieth out. 
    Day-long they rode the mountains by the crags exceeding old,
    And the ash that the first of the Dwarf-kind found dull and quenched
      and cold. 
    Then the moon in the mid-sky swam, and the stars were fair and pale,
    And beneath the naked heaven they slept in an ash-grey dale;
    And again at the dawn-dusk’s ending they stood upon their feet,
    And Sigurd donned his war-gear nor his eyes would Regin meet.

    A clear streak widened in heaven low down above the earth;
    And above it lay the cloud-flecks, and the sun, anigh its birth,
    Unseen, their hosts was staining with the very hue of blood,
    And ruddy by Greyfell’s shoulder the Son of Sigmund stood.

    Then spake the Master of Masters:  “What is thine hope this morn
    That thou dightest thee, O Sigurd, to ride this world forlorn?”

    “What needeth hope,” said Sigurd, “when the heart of the Volsungs turns
    To the light of the Glittering Heath, and the house where the Waster
      burns? 
    I shall slay the Foe of the Gods, as thou badst me a while agone,
    And then with the Gold and its wisdom shalt thou be left alone.”

    “O Child,” said the King of the Dwarf-kind, “when the day at last
      comes round
    For the dread and the Dusk of the Gods, and the kin of the Wolf is
      unbound,
    When thy sword shall hew the fire, and the wildfire beateth thy shield,
    Shalt thou praise the wages of hope and the Gods that pitched the
      field?”