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:

  “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.

And as close as are the tree-trunks that within the beech-wood thrive

E’en so many are their pillars; and therein like men alive

Stand the images of god-folk in such raiment as they wore

In the years before the cities and the hidden days of yore.

Ah for the gold that I gazed on! and their store of battle gear,

And strange engines that I knew not, or the end for which they were.

Ah for the ordered wisdom of the war-array of these,

And the folks that are sitting about them in dumb down-trodden peace!

So I thought now fareth war-ward my well-beloved friend,

And the weird of the Gods hath doomed it that no more with him may I wend!

Woe’s me for the war of the Wolfings wherefrom I am sundered apart,

And the fruitless death of the war-wise, and the doom of the hardy heart!”