“O mighty man and joyous, art thou of the Wolfing kin?  ’Twas no evil deed when we mingled, nor lieth doom therein.  Thou lovely man, thou black-haired, thou shalt die and have done no ill.  Fame-crowned are the deeds of thy doing, and the mouths of men they fill.  Thou betterer of the Godfolk, enduring is thy fame:  Yet as a painted image of a dream is thy dreaded name.  Of an alien folk thou comest, that we twain might be one indeed.  Thou shalt die one day.  So hearken, to help me at my need.”

His face grew troubled and he said:  “What is this word that I am no chief of the Wolfings?”

“Nay,” she said, “but better than they.  Look thou on the face of our daughter the Hall-Sun, thy daughter and mine:  favoureth she at all of me?”

He laughed:  “Yea, whereas she is fair, but not otherwise.  This is a hard saying, that I dwell among an alien kindred, and it wotteth not thereof.  Why hast thou not told me hereof before?”

She said:  “It needed not to tell thee because thy day was waxing, as now it waneth.  Once more I bid thee hearken and do my bidding though it be hard to thee.”

He answered:  “Even so will I as much as I may; and thus wise must thou look upon it, that I love life, and fear not death.”

Then she spake, and again her words fell into rhyme: 

   “In forty fights hast thou foughten, and been worsted but in four;
   And I looked on and was merry; and ever more and more
   Wert thou dear to the heart of the Wood-Sun, and the Chooser of the
   Slain. 
   But now whereas ye are wending with slaughter-herd and wain
   To meet a folk that ye know not, a wonder, a peerless foe,
   I fear for thy glory’s waning, and I see thee lying alow.”

Then he brake in:  “Herein is little shame to be worsted by the might of the mightiest:  if this so mighty folk sheareth a limb off the tree of my fame, yet shall it wax again.”

But she sang: 

   “In forty fights hast thou foughten, and beside thee who but I
   Beheld the wind-tossed banners, and saw the aspen fly? 
   But to-day to thy war I wend not, for Weird withholdeth me
   And sore my heart forebodeth for the battle that shall be. 
   To-day with thee I wend not; so I feared, and lo my feet,
   That are wont to the woodland girdle of the acres of the wheat,
   For thee among strange people and the foeman’s throng have trod,
   And I tell thee their banner of battle is a wise and a mighty God. 
   For these are the folk of the cities, and in wondrous wise they dwell
   ’Mid confusion of heaped houses, dim and black as the face of hell;
   Though therefrom rise roofs most goodly, where their captains and
   their kings
   Dwell amidst the walls of marble in abundance of fair things;
   And ’mid these, nor worser nor better, but builded otherwise
   Stand the Houses of the Fathers, and the hidden mysteries.