tell what thou wilt, and say this word withal:
'Mother, I come from the wild-wood, and he saith, whatever befal
Alone will I abide there, nor have such fosterlings;
For the sons of the Gods may help me, but never the sons of Kings.'
Go, then, with this word in thy mouth--or do thou after thy fate,
And, if thou wilt, betray me!--and repent it early and late."

Then he turned his back on the acres, and away to the woodland strode;
But the boy scarce bided the sunrise ere he went the homeward road;
So he came to the house of the Goth-kings, and spake with Signy the
Queen,
Nor told he to any other the things he had heard and seen,
For the heart of a king's son had he.
But Signy hearkened his word;
And long she pondered and said: "What is it my heart hath feared?
And how shall it be with earth's people if the kin of the Volsungs die,
And King Volsung unavenged in his mound by the sea-strand lie?
I have given my best and bravest, as my heart's blood I would give,
And my heart and my fame and my body, that the name of Volsung might
live.
Lo the first gift cast aback: and how shall it be with the last,--
--If I find out the gift for the giving before the hour be passed?"

Long while she mused and pondered while day was thrust on day,
Till the king and the earls of the strangers seemed shades of the
dreamtide grey
And gone seemed all earth's people, save that woman mid the gold
And that man in the depths of the forest in the cave of the Dwarfs
of old.
And once in the dark she murmured: "Where then was the ancient song
That the Gods were but twin-born once, and deemed it nothing wrong
To mingle for the world's sake, whence had the AEsir birth,
And the Vanir and the Dwarf-kind, and all the folk of earth?"

Now amidst those days that she pondered came a wife of the
witch-folk there,
A woman young and lovesome, and shaped exceeding fair,
And she spake with Signy the Queen, and told her of deeds of her craft,
And how the might was with her her soul from her body to waft
And to take the shape of another and give her fashion in turn.
Fierce then in the heart of Signy a sudden flame 'gan burn,
And the eyes of her soul saw all things, like the blind, whom the
world's last fire
Hath healed in one passing moment 'twixt his deat