All men’s hearts rose high as he sang, and when he had ended arose the clang of sword and shield and went ringing down the meadow, and the mighty shout of the Markmen’s joy rent the heavens:  for in sooth at that moment they saw Thiodolf, their champion, sitting among the Gods on his golden chair, sweet savours around him, and sweet sound of singing, and he himself bright-faced and merry as no man on earth had seen him, for as joyous a man as he was.

But when the sound of their exultation sank down, the Hall-Sun spake again: 

“Now wendeth the sun westward, and weary grows the Earth Of all the long day’s doings in sorrow and in mirth; And as the great sun waneth, so doth my candle wane, And its flickering flame desireth to rest and die again.  Therefore across the meadows wend we aback once more To the holy Roof of the Wolfings, the shrine of peace and war.  And these that once have loved us, these warriors images, Shall sit amidst our feasting, and see, as the Father sees The works that men-folk fashion and the rest of toiling hands, When his eyes look down from the mountains and the heavens above all lands, And up from the flowery meadows and the rolling deeps of the sea.  There then at the feast with our champions familiar shall we be As oft we are with the Godfolk, when in story-rhymes and lays We laugh as we tell of their laughter, and their deeds of other days.

   “Come then, ye sons of the kindreds who hither bore these twain! 
   Take up their beds of glory, and fare we home again,
   And feast as men delivered from toil unmeet to bear,
   Who through the night are looking to the dawn-tide fresh and fair
   And the morn and the noon to follow, and the eve and its morrow morn,
   All the life of our deliv’rance and the fair days yet unborn.”

So she spoke, and a murmur arose as those valiant men came forth again.  But lo, now were they dight in fresh and fair raiment and gleaming war-array.  For while all this was a-doing and a-saying, they had gotten them by the Hall-Sun’s bidding unto the wains of their Houses, and had arrayed them from the store therein.

So now they took up the biers, and the Hall-Sun led them, and they went over the meadow before the throng of the kindreds, who followed them duly ordered, each House about its banner; and when they were come through the garth which the Romans had made to the Man’s-door of the Hall, there were the women of the House freshly attired, who cast flowers on the living men of the host, and on the dead War-dukes, while they wept for pity of them.  So went the freemen of the Houses into the Hall, following the Hall-Sun, and the bearers of the War-dukes; but the banners abode without in the garth made by the Romans; and the thralls arrayed a feast for themselves about the wains of the kindreds in the open place before their cots and the smithying booths and the byres.

And as the Hall-Sun went into the Hall, she thrust down the candle against the threshold of the Man’s-door, and so quenched it.