“In many a stead Doom dwelleth, nor sleepeth day nor night: 
   The rim of the bowl she kisseth, and beareth the chambering light
   When the kings of men wend happy to the bride-bed from the board. 
   It is little to say that she wendeth the edge of the grinded sword,
   When about the house half builded she hangeth many a day;
   The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way
   By the mountain-hunter fareth where his foot ne’er failed before: 
   She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river’s shore: 
   The mower’s scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep
   Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. 
   Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot,
   But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not. 
   So therefore I bid thee not fear for thyself of Doom and her deed,
   But for me:  and I bid thee hearken to the helping of my need. 
   Or else—­Art thou happy in life, or lusteth thou to die
   In the flower of thy days, when thy glory and thy longing bloom on
   high?”

But Thiodolf answered her: 

“I have deemed, and long have I deemed that this is my second life, That my first one waned with my wounding when thou cam’st to the ring of strife.  For when in thine arms I wakened on the hazelled field of yore, Meseemed I had newly arisen to a world I knew no more, So much had all things brightened on that dewy dawn of day.  It was dark dull death that I looked for when my thought had died away.  It was lovely life that I woke to; and from that day henceforth My joy of the life of man-folk was manifolded of worth.  Far fairer the fields of the morning than I had known them erst, And the acres where I wended, and the corn with its half-slaked thirst; And the noble Roof of the Wolfings, and the hawks that sat thereon; And the bodies of my kindred whose deliverance I had won; And the glimmering of the Hall-Sun in the dusky house of old; And my name in the mouth of the maidens, and the praises of the bold, As I sat in my battle-raiment, and the ruddy spear well steeled Leaned ’gainst my side war-battered, and the wounds thine hand had healed.  Yea, from that morn thenceforward has my life been good indeed, The gain of to-day was goodly, and good to-morrow’s need, And good the whirl of the battle, and the broil I wielded there, Till I fashioned the ordered onset, and the unhoped victory fair.  And good were the days thereafter of utter deedless rest And the prattle of thy daughter, and her hands on my unmailed breast.  Ah good is the life thou hast given, the life that mine hands have won.  And where shall be the ending till the world is all undone?  Here sit we twain together, and both we in Godhead clad, We twain of the Wolfing kindred, and each of the other glad.”

But she answered, and her face grew darker withal: